
Woodrow Wilson 



PRESIDENT WILSON'S 
ADDRESSES 



EDITED BY 

GEORGE McLEAN HARPER 

PROFESSOR IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY; AXTTHOR OF " MASTERS OF FRENCH 

LITERATURE," " LIFE OF SAINTE-BEUVE," AND " WILLIAM 

WORDSWORTH, HIS LIFE, WORKS, AND INFLUENCE " 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



0..6'Z 



Copyright 1918, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



MAY 29 1518 

©CI.A^99278 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 



Introduction , 



Vll 



First Inaugural Address 3 

First Address to Congress 9 

Address on the Banking System ^3 

Address at Gettysburg ^7 

Address on Mexican Affairs ^^ 

Understanding America ^9 

Address before the Southern Commercial Congress 3^ 

The State of the Union 42 

Trusts and Monopolies 54 

Panama Canal Tolls ^3 

The Tampico Incident ^5 

In the Firmament of Memory 7o 

Memorial Day Address at ArUngton 74 

Closing a Chapter >■ 77 

Annapolis Commencement Address ^° 

^ The Meaning of Liberty ^^ 

^ American Neutrality ^^ 

•Appeal for Additional Revenue 9^ 

The Opinion of the World ^°- 

The Power of Christian Young Men ^o^ 

Annual Address to Congress ^^^ 

A Message ^ 

Address before the United States Chamber of Commerce 13 5 

To Naturalized Citizens ^49 

Address at Milwaukee ^^^ 

The Submarine Question ^^^ 

American Principles ^'^ 

The Demands of Railway Employees ^79 

Speech of Acceptance ^ 7 

V 



v^ 



y 



vi Contents 

PAGE 

Lincoln's Beginnings 205 

The Triumph of Women's Suffrage 210 

t^ The Terms of Peace 215 

^^.^Meeting Germany's Challenge 224 

Request for Authority 230 

I- Second Inaugural Address 236 

V. The Call to War 241 

l^. To the Country 253 

The German Plot 259 

Reply to the Pope 265 

Labor must be Free 269 

The Call for War with Austria-Hungary 279 

Government Administration of Railways 292 

The Conditions of Peace 297 

Force to the Utmost 306 



INTRODUCTION 

These addresses of President Woodrow Wilson represent 
only the most recent phase of his intellectual activity. 
They are almost entirely concerned with political affairs, 
and more specifically with defining Americanism. It will 
not be forgotten, however, that the life of Mr. Wilson as 
President of the United States is but a short period com- 
pared with the whole of his public career as professor of 
jurisprudence, history, and politics, as President of 
Princeton University, as Governor of New Jersey, as an 
orator, and as a writer of many books. 

Surprise has been expressed that a man, after reaching 
the age of fifty, should be able to step from the ''quiet" 
life of a teacher and author into the resounding regions of 
politics; but Mr. Wilson's life as a scholar, professor, and 
author was not at all quiet in the sense of being easy or 
untouched with exciting chances and changes, and, in the 
second place, he carried into politics the steadying ideals 
and the methodical habits of his former occupation. 

As these addresses themselves prove, he has retained 
something of the teacher's interest in showing the rela- 
tion between specific instances and the general forms of 
thought or action of which they are a part. Not fact 
alone, but principle, is what he seeks to discover to his 
audiences. In the addresses made in 19 13 it is apparent 
that his main effort was to fasten attention upon the 
principles of international justice and good will and to 
restrain the impulses of those Americans who were inclined 
to hasty action with reference to Mexico. From the 

vii 



viii Introduction 

beginning of the Great War to a point not much earlier 
than our own entrance into the struggle, he counselled 
neutrality and inaction, with what motives one must 
judge from his statements and from events. Only a few 
speeches belonging to this period have been included in 
the present collection. When it became practically certain 
that war between the United States and Germany was 
inevitable, there came into his utterances a new temper 
and a more direct kind of eloquence. With scarcely an 
exception, this collection includes every one of his addresses 
made between August, 1916, and February, 19 18. 

Some of the addresses are state papers, read to Con- 
gress, and were carefully composed. Others, deUvered in 
various places, appear to have been more or less extem- 
poraneous. All are full of their author's political philos- 
ophy, and many of them contain expressions of his opinions 
on general subjects, such as personal character and conduct. 

In order more fully to appreciate the weight of expe- 
rience and the maturity of reflection which give value to 
his words, it will be worth while to consider Mr. Wilson's 
entire career as a scholar and man of letters, paying 
particular attention to the growth of his political ideals 
and to the qualities of his style. 

To be a literary artist, a writer must possess a construc- 
tive imagination. He must be a man of feeling and have 
the gift of imparting to others some share of his own emo- 
tions. On almost every page of President Wilson's writ- 
ings, as in almost all his policies, whether educational or 
political, is stamped the evidence of shaping, visionary 
power. Those of us who have known him many years 
remember well that in his daily thought and speech he 
habitually proceeded by this same poetic method, first 
growing warm with an idea and then by analogy and figure 
kindhng a sympathetic heat in his hearers. 



Introduction Ix 

The subjects that may excite an artist's imagination are 
infinitely numerous and belong to every variety of con- 
ceivable life. A Coleridge or a Renan will make literature 
out of polemical theology; a Huxley will write on the 
physical basis of life with emotion and in such a way as to 
infect others with his own feelings; a Macaulay or a Froude 
will give what color he please to the story of a nation and 
compel all but the most wary readers to see as through his 
eyes. We are too much accustomed to reserve the title of 
Hterary artist for the creator of fiction, whether in prose or 
in verse. Mr. Wilson is no less truly an artist because the 
vision that fires his imagination, the vision he has spent his 
life in making clear to himself and others and is now striv- 
ing to realize in action, is a poHtical conception. He has 
seen it in terms of life, as a thing that grows, that speaks, 
that has faced dangers, that is full of promise, that has 
charm, that is fit to stir a man's blood and demand a 
world's devotion; no wonder he has warmed to it, no won- 
der he has clothed it in the richest garments of diction and 
rhythm and figure. 

There are small artists and great artists. Granted an 
equal portion of imagination and an equal command of 
verbal resources, and still there will be this difference. It 
is an affair of more or less intellectual depth and more or 
less character. If character were the only one of these 
two things to be considered in the case of Mr. Wilson's 
writings, one might with Kttle or no hesitation predict that 
the best of them would long remain classics. They are 
full of character, of a high and fine character. They have 
a tone peculiar to themselves, hke a man's voice, which 
is one of the most unmistakable properties of a nian. It 
would be no reflection on an author to say that his point 
of view in fundamental matters had changed in the course 
of thirty or forty years; but the truth is that with reference 



X Introduction 

to his great political ideal Mr. Wilson's point of view has 
not widely changed. The scope of his survey has been 
enlarged, he has filled up the intervening space with a 
thousand observations, he sees his object with a more 
penetrating and commanding eye; but it is the same object 
that drew to itself his youthful gaze, and has had its part in 
making him 

"The generous spirit, who, when brought 
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought 
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought." 

The world, in time, will judge of the amount of knowl- 
edge and the degree of purely intellectual force that 
Mr. Wilson has applied in his field of study. A contem- 
porary cannot well pronounce such a judgment, especially 
if the province be not his own. 

In the small space at my disposal I shall try, first, to 
say what I think is the political conception or idea upon 
which Mr. Wilson has looked so steadily and with so deep 
emotion that he has made of it a poetical subject. And 
then I shall venture to distinguish those processes of 
imagination, that artistic method, which we call style, by 
which he has elucidated its meaning for his readers so as to 
win for it their intelHgent and moved regard. The inquiry 
will take into account his earliest book, Congressional 
Government, published in 1885, Division and Reunion, 
1893, An Old Master and Other Political Essays, 1893, 
Mere Literature and Other Essays, 1896, George Washington, 
1897, The State, written 1889, rewritten 1898, A History of 
the American People, 1902, Constitutional Government in the 
United States, 1908, and a volume, issued very recently in 
England, containing some of the President's statements on 
the war and entitled America and Freedom. 

Like a strong current through these works runs the 



Introduction xi 

doctrine that in a good government the law-making power 
should be also the administering power and should bear 
full and specific responsibiUty; safeguards against ill- 
considered action being provided in two directions, by the 
people on the one hand, and on the other hand by law and 
custom, these latter being considered historically, as an 
organic growth. He finds the elements and essentials of 
this doctrine in our Constitution, though somewhat ob- 
scured by the old '' literary " theory of checks and balances. 
He finds it more fully acknowledged in the British Consti- 
tution. He finds it originating in our English race, enun- 
ciated at Runnymede, developing by a slow but natural 
growth in Enghsh history, sanctioned in the Petition of 
Right, the Revolution of 1688, and the Declaration of 
Rights, achieved for us in our ovm Revolution, and illus- 
trated by the implied powers of Congress and the more 
directly exercised powers of the House of Commons. It is a 
corollary of this doctrine that the President of the United 
States, to whom in the veto and in his pecuHar relations to 
the Senate our Constitution gives a very real legislative 
function, should associate himseh closely with Congress," 
not merely as one who may annul but also as one who 
initiates pohcies and helps to translate them into laws. 
In his Congressional Government, begun when he was a 
student in Princeton and finished before he was twenty- 
eight years old, Mr. Wilson clearly indicates his dissatisfac- 
tion with the tradition which would set the executive apart 
from the legislative power as a check against it and not a 
cooperating element; and it is a remarkable proof of the 
man's integrity and persistent personality that one of 
his first acts as President was to go before the Congress as 
if he were its agent. 

If any proof of his democracy were required, one might 
point to his rather surprising statement, which he has re- 



xll Introduction 

peated more than once, that the chief value of Congres- 
sional debate is to arouse and inform public opinion. He 
regards the will of the people as the real source of govern- 
mental policy. Yet he is very impatient of those theories 
of the rights of man which found favor in France in the 
eighteenth century and have been the mainspring of 
democratic movements on the Continent of Europe. He 
regards poHtical liberty, as we know it in this country, as a 
peculiar possession of the English race to which, in all that 
concerns jurisprudence, we Americans belong. 

The other safeguard against arbitrary action by the 
combined legislative-administrative power is, he declares, 
national respect for the spirit of those general legal con- 
ceptions which, through many centuries, have been mak- 
ing themselves part and parcel of our racial instinct. He 
perceives that the British Constitution, though unwritten, 
is as effective as ours and commands obedience fully as 
much as ours, and that both appeal to a certain ingrained 
legal sense, common to all the English-speaking peoples. 
These peoples do not really have revolutions. What we 
'call the American Revolution was only the reaffirming of 
principles which were as precious in the eyes of most 
Englishmen as they were in the eyes of Washington, 
Hamilton, and Madison, but which had been for a time 
and owing to peculiar circumstances, neglected or con- 
travened. Political development in this family of nations 
does not, he maintains, proceed by revolution, but by 
evolution. On all these points his Constitutional Govern- 
ment in the United States is only a richer and more mature 
statement and illustration of the ideas expressed in his 
Congressional Government. The main thesis of his George 
Washington is that the great Virginian and first American 
was the truest Englishman of his time, a modern Hampden 
or Eliot, a Burke in action. Again and again he pays 



Introduction xiil 

respect to Chief Justice Marshall, who represented, in our 
early history, the conception of law as something in its 
breadth and majesty older and more sacred than the 
decrees of any particular legislature, and yet capable of 
being so interpreted as to accommodate itself to progress. 
Mr, Wilson has from the beginning been an admiring 
student of Burke. And if Burke has been his study, 
Bagehot has been his school-master. The choice of book 
and teacher is significant. Mere Literature shows how 
Mr. Wilson revered them in 1896; his public life proves 
that he learned their lessons well. In An Old Master and 
Other Essays, he had already borne witness to the genius of 
Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, who, as compared 
with Continental writers, illustrate in the field of economics 
the Anglo-Saxon spirit of respect for customs that have 
grown by organic processes. 

Mr. Wilson's Division and Reunion is an admirable 
treatment of a question upon which a Southerner might 
have been expected to write as a Southerner. He has dis- 
cussed it as an American. His well-known text-book The 
State, which has been revised and frequently reprinted, 
discusses the chief theories of the origin of government, 
describes the administrative systems of Greece and Rome 
and of the great nations of medieval and modern Europe 
and of the United States, and treats in detail of the func- 
tions and objects of government, with special reference to 
law and its workings. His History of the American People, 
though it contains many passages of insight and has the 
charm that comes from intense appreciation of details, is 
too diffuse and repetitious. A great history should be a 
combination of a chronicle and a treatise; it should be a 
record of facts and at the same time a philosophical exposi- 
tion of an idea. Mr. Wilson's five-volume work is insuffi- 
cient as a chronicle and too long for ^n essay. Yet an 



xiv Introduction 

essay it really is. Moreover, unless I myself am blinded by 
prejudice, it makes too much of the errors committed by 
our government in the reconstruction period after the 
Civil War. On the whole, with all their faults, the ad- 
ministrations of Grant and Hayes accomphshed a task of 
enormous difi&culty, with remarkably Httle impatience and 
intemperance. The disadvantage of having been written 
originally under pressure in monthly instalments, for a 
periodical, is clearly visible in the History. There is a too 
constant effort to catch the eye with picturesque de- 
scription. Nevertheless, m this book, as in the others, 
Mr. Wilson evokes in his readers a noble image of that 
government, constitutional, traditional, democratic, self- 
developing, which, from the days of his youth, aroused in 
him a poetic enthusiasm. 

And now for the way his imagination works and clothes 
itself in language. The quaUty of his mind is poetic, and 
his style is highly figurative. There have been very few 
professors, lecturing on abstruse subjects, such as econom- 
ics, jurisprudence, and politics, who have dared to give so 
free a rein to an instinct frankly artistic. In the early days 
of his career, Mr. Wilson was invited to follow two courses 
which were supposed to be inconsistent with each other. 
The so-called "scientific" method, much admired at that 
time even when applied to subjects in which philosophic 
insight or a sense for beauty are the proper guides, was 
being urged upon the rising generation of scholars. Per- 
haps the Johns Hopkins University was the center of this 
impulse in America; at least it was thought to be, though 
the source was almost wholly German. If he had had to be 
a dry-as-dust in order to be a writer on politics and history, 
Mr. Wilson would have preferred to turn his attention to 
biography and literary criticism. But he promptly re- 
solved to disregard the warnings of pedants and to be a 



Introduction xv 

man of letters though a professor of history and politics. 
I well remember the irritation, sometimes amused and 
sometimes angry, with which he used to speak of those who 
were persuaded that scholarship was in some way con- 
taminated by the touch of imagination or philosophy. He 
at least would run the risk. And so he set himself to work 
cultivating the graces of style no less assiduously than the 
exactness of science. There is a distinct filiation in his 
diction, by which, from Stevenson to Lamb and from 
Lamb to Sir Thomas Browne, one can trace it back to the 
quaint old prose writers of the seventeenth century. I 
remember his calhng my attention, in 1890, or there- 
abouts, to the dehghtful stylistic qualities of those wor- 
thies. Many of his colors are from their ink-horns, in 
which the pigments were of deep and varied hues. When 
he is sententious and didactic he seems to have caught 
something of Emerson's manner. And indeed there is in 
all his writings a flavor of optimism and a slightly dog- 
matic, even when thoroughly gentle and persuasive, tone 
which he has in common with the New England sage. 
But in spite of all these resemblances to older authors, 
Mr. Wilson gives proof in his style of a masterful inde- 
pendence. He is constantly determined to think for him- 
self, to get to the bottom of his subject, and finally to 
express the matter in terms of his own personality. Espe- 
cially is this evident in his early works, where he struggles 
manfully to be himself, even in the choice of words and 
phrases, weighing and analyzing the most current idioms 
and often making in them some thoughtful alteration the 
better to express his exact meaning. His hterary training 
appears to have been almost wholly EngUsh. There are 
few traces in his writings of any classical reading or of 
any first-hand acquaintance with French, German, or 
ItaUan authors. And indeed in the substance of his 



xvi Introduction 

thought I wonder if he is sufficiently hospitable to foreign 
ideas, especially to the vast body of comment on the 
French Revolution. I imagine few Continental authorities 
would agree with him in his comparatively low estimate of 
the importance of that great movement, which he seems 
to regard with almost unmitigated disapproval. 

In Mr. Wilson's addresses and public letters concerning 
the War he re-affirms his principles and applies them with 
high confidence to the fateful problems of this time. His 
tone has become vastly deeper and sounder since he made 
his great decision, and from his Speech to Congress, on 
February 3, 191 7, to his recent Baltimore appeal, it has 
rung true to every good impulse in the hearts of our people. 
His letter to the Pope is in every way his master-piece, 
in style, in temper, and in power of thought. He has led 
his country to the place it ought to occupy, by the side 
of that other English democracy whose institutions, ideals, 
and destiny are almost identical with our own, as he has 
demonstrated in the writings of half a lifetime. Let us 
hope there was prophetic virtue in a passage of his Consti- 
tutional Government, where, speaking of the relation be- 
tween our several States and the Union that binds them 
together, he says they ''may yet afford the world itself 
the model of federation and liberty it may in God's 
providence come to seek." 

No one can rise from a perusal of the great mass of 
Mr. Wilson's writings without an almost oppressive sense 
of his unremitting and strenuous industry. From his 
senior year in college to the present day he has borne the 
anxieties and responsibilities of authorship. The work has 
been done with extreme conscientiousness in regard to 
accuracy and clearness of thinking and with sedulous care 
for justness and beauty of expression. It might well crown 
a life with honor. And when we remember the thousands 



Introduction xvli 

of his college lectures and the hundreds of his miscel- 
laneous addresses which have found no record in print, 
when we recall the labors of university administration 
which crowded upon him in middle life, when we consider 
the spectacle of his calm, prompt, orderly, and energetic 
performance of public duty in these latter years, our ad- 
miration for the Hterary artist is enhanced by our pro- 
found respect for the man.* 

* A considerable part of this Introduction appeared originally as 
an article in The Princeton Alumni Weekly. 



PRESIDENT WILSON'S ADDRESSES 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

[Delivered at the Capitol, in Washington, March 4, 1913.] 

There has been a change of government. It began two 
years ago, when the House of Representatives became 
Democratic by a decisive majority. It has now been 
completed. The Senate about to assemble will also be 
Democratic. The offices of President and Vice-President s 
have been put into the hands of Democrats. What does 
the change mean? That is the question that is uppermost 
in our minds to-day. That is the question I am going to 
try to answer, in order, if I may, to interpret the occasion. 

It means much more than the mere success of a party. 10 
The success of a party means little except when the Nation 
is using that party for a large and definite purpose. No 
one can mistake the purpose for which the Nation now 
seeks to use the Democratic Party. It seeks to use it to 
interpret a change in its own plans and point of view. 15 
Some old things with which we had grown familiar, and 
which had begun to creep into the very habit of our thought 
and of our lives, have altered their aspect as we have 
latterly looked critically upon them, with fresh, awakened 
eyes; have dropped their disguises and shown themselves 20 
alien and sinister. Some new things, as we look frankly 
upon them, willing to comprehend their real character, 
have come to assume the aspect of things long believed in 
and familiar, stuff of our own convictions. We have been 
refreshed by a new insight into our own life. 25 

We see that in many things that life is very great. It is 
incomparably great in its material aspects, in its body of 
wealth, in the diversity and sweep of its energy, in the 

3 



4 Woodrow Wilson 

industries which have been conceived and built up by the 
genius of individual men and the Hmitless enterprise of 
groups of men. It is great, also, very great, in its moral 
force. Nowhere else in the world have noble men and 
5 w^omen exhibited in more striking forms the beauty and 
the energy of sympathy and helpfulness and counsel in 
their efforts to rectify wrong, alleviate suffering, and set 
the weak in the way of strength and hope. We have built 
up, moreover, a great system of government, which has 

10 stood through a long age as in many respects a model for 
those who seek to set liberty upon foundations that wdll 
endure against fortuitous change, against storm and 
accident. Our life contains every great thing, and con- 
tains it in rich abundance. 

15 But the evil has come with the good, and much fine gold 
has been corroded. With riches has come inexcusable 
waste. We have squandered a great part of what we 
might have used, and have not stopped to conserve the 
exceeding bounty of nature, without which our genius for 

20 enterprise would have been worthless and impotent, 
scorning to be careful, shamefully prodigal as well as 
admirably efhcient. We have been proud of our industrial 
achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thought- 
fully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives 

25 snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful 
physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and 
children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all 
has fallen pitilessly the years through. The groans and 
agony of it all had not yet reached our ears, the solemn, 

30 moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines 
and factories and out of every home where the struggle 
had its intimate and famihar seat. With the great Gov- 
ernment went many deep secret things which we too long 
delayed to look into and scrutinize with candid, fearless 



First Inaugural Address 5 

eyes. The great Government we loved has too often been 
made use of for private and selfish purposes, and those who 
used it had forgotten the people. 

At last a vision has been vouchsafed us of our hfe as a 
whole. We see the bad with the good, the debased and s 
decadent with the sound and vital. With this vision we 
approach new afi"airs. Our duty is to cleanse, to recon- 
sider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the 
good, to purify and humanize every process of our common 
hfe without weakening or sentimentalizing it. There has 10 
been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our 
haste to succeed and be great. Our thought has been "Let 
every man look out for himself, let every generation look 
out for itself," while we reared giant machinery which 
made it impossible that any but those who stood at the 15 
levers of control should have a chance to look out for them- 
selves. We had not forgotten our morals. We remem- 
bered well enough that we had set up a policy which was 
meant to serve the humblest as well as the most powerful, 
with an eye single to the standards of justice and fair play, 20 
and remembered it with pride. But we were very heedless 
and in a hurry to be great. 

We have come now to the sober second thought. The 
scales of heedlessness have fallen from our eyes. We have 
made up our minds to square every process of our national 25 
life again with the standards we so proudly set up at the 
beginning and have always carried at our hearts. Our 
work is a work of restoration. 

We have itemized with some degree of particularity the 
things that ought to be altered and here are some of the 30 
chief items: A tariff which cuts us off from our proper part 
in the commerce of the world, violates the just principles of 
taxation, and makes the Government a facile instrument 
in the hands of private interests; a banking and currency 



6 Woodrow Wilson 

system based upon the necessity of the Government to 
sell its bonds fifty years ago and perfectly adapted to con- 
centrating cash and restricting credits; an industrial sys- 
tem which, take it on all its sides, financial as well as 

5 administrative, holds capital in leading strings, restricts 
the liberties and limits the opportunities of labor, and 
exploits without renewing or conserving the natural re- 
sources of the country; a body of agricultural activities 
never yet given the efficiency of great business under- 

lo takings or served as it should be through the instrumental- 
ity of science taken directly to the farm, or afforded the 
faciUties of credit best suited to its practical needs; water- 
courses undeveloped, waste places unreclaimed, forests 
untended, fast disappearing without plan or prospect of 

15 renewal, unregarded waste heaps at every mine. We have 
studied, as perhaps no other nation has, the most effective 
means of production, but we have not studied cost or 
economy as we should, either as organizers of industry, as 
statesmen, or as individuals. 

20 Nor have we studied and perfected the means by which 
government may be put at the service of humanity, in 
safeguarding the health of the Nation, the health of its men 
and its women and its children, as well as their rights in 
the struggle for existence. This is no sentimental duty. 

25 The firm basis of government is justice, not pity. These 
are matters of justice. There can be no equality of oppor- 
tunity, the first essential of justice in the body poUtic, if 
men and women and children be not shielded in their 
lives, their very vitality, from the consequences of great 

30 industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, 
control, or singly cope with. Society must see to it that 
it does not itself crush or weaken or damage its own 
constituent parts. The first duty of law is to keep sound 
the society it serves. Sanitary laws, pure-food laws, and 



First Inaugural Address 7 

laws determining conditions of labor which individuals 
are powerless to determine for themselves are intimate 
parts of the very business of justice and legal efficiency. 

These are some of the things we ought to do, and not 
leave the others undone, the old-fashioned, never-to-be- 5 
neglected, fundamental safeguarding of property and of 
individual right. This is the high enterprise of the new 
day: To lift everything that concerns our life as a Nation 
to the light that shines from the hearthfire of every man's 
conscience and vision of the right. It is inconceivable that 10 
we should do this as partisans; it is inconceivable we should 
do it in ignorance of the facts as they are or in blind haste. 
We shall restore, not destroy. We shall deal with our 
economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as 
it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; 15 
and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in the 
spirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek 
counsel and knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the 
excitement of excursions whither they cannot tell. Jus- 
tice, and only justice, shall always be our motto. 20 

And yet it will be no cool process of mere science. The 
Nation has been deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, 
stirred by the knowledge of wrong, of ideals lost, of govern- 
ment too often debauched and made an instrument of 
evil. The feelings with which we face this new age of right 25 
and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some 
air out of God's own presence, where justice and mercy are 
reconciled and the judge and the brother are one. We 
know our task to be no mere task of politics but a task 
which shall search us through and through, whether we be 30 
able to understand our time and the need of our people, 
whether we be indeed their spokesmen and interpreters, 
whether we have the pure heart to comprehend and the 
rectified will to choose our high course of action. 



8 Woodrow Wilson 

This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. 
Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of 
humanity. Men's hearts wait upon us; men's hves hang 
in the balance; men's hopes call upon us to say what we 
will do. Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares 
fail to try? I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all 
forward-looking men, to my side. God helping me, I will 
not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me I 



FIRST ADDRESS TO CONGRESS 

[Delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, at the 
beginning of the first session of the Sixty-third Congress, April 8, 
1913-] 

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Gentlemen of the 
Congress: 

I am very glad indeed to have this opportunity to ad- 
dress the two Houses directly and to verify for myself the 
impression that the President of the United States is a 5 
person, not a mere department of the Government haihng 
Congress from some isolated island of jealous power, send- 
ing messages, not speaking naturally and with his own 
voice — that he is a human being trying to cooperate with 
other human beings in a common service. After this 10 
pleasant experience I shall feel quite normal in all our 
dealings with one another.* 

I have called the Congress together in extraordinary 
session because a duty was laid upon the party now in 
power at the recent elections which it ought to perform 15 
promptly, in order that the burden carried by the people 
under existing law may be lightened as soon as possible 
and in order, also, that the business interests of the coun- 
try may not be kept too long in suspense as to what the 
fiscal changes are to be to which they will be required to 20 
adjust themselves. It is clear to the whole country that 
the tariff duties must be altered. They must be changed 
to meet the radical alteration in the conditions of our 
economic life which the country has witnessed within 

* It had been the practice of our Presidents to send their Messages 
to Congress and not to read them in person. 

9 



10 Woodrow Wilson 

the last generation. While the whole face and method of 
our industrial and commercial life were being changed 
beyond recognition the tariff schedules have remained 
what they were before the change began, or have moved 

5 in the direction they were given when no large circum- 
stance of our industrial development was what it is to- 
day. Our task is to square them with the actual facts. 
The sooner that is done the sooner we shall escape from 
suffering from the facts and the sooner our men of business 

10 will be free to thrive by the law of nature (the nature of 
free business) instead of by the law of legislation and 
artificial arrangement. 

We have seen tariff legislation wander very far afield 
in our day — very far indeed from the field in which our 

15 prosperity might have had a normal growth and stimula- 
tion. No one who looks the facts squarely in the face or 
knows anything that lies beneath the surface of action 
can fail to perceive the principles upon which recent tariff 
legislation has been based. We long ago passed beyond 

2o the modest notion of ''protecting" the industries of the 
country and moved boldly forward to the idea that they 
were entitled to the direct patronage of the Government. 
For a long time — a time so long that the men now active 
in public policy hardly remember the conditions that 

25 preceded it — we have sought in our tariff schedules to 
give each group of manufacturers or producers what they 
themselves thought that they needed in order to maintain 
a practically exclusive market as against the rest of the 
world. Consciously or unconsciously, we have built up 

30 a set of privileges and exemptions from competition be- 
hind which it was easy by any, e\'en the crudest, forms of 
combination to organize monopoly; until at last nothing 
is normal, nothing is obliged to stand the tests of eflficiency 
and economy, in our world of big business, but everything 



First Address to Congress ii 



to' 



thrives by concerted arrangement. Only new principles 
of action will save us from a final hard crystallization of 
monopoly and a complete loss of the influences that quicken 
enterprise and keep independent energy alive. 

It is plain what those principles must be. We must 5 
abolish everything that bears even the semblance of 
privilege or of any kind of artificial advantage, and put 
our business men and producers under the stimulation of 
a constant necessity to be efficient, economical, and enter- 
prising, masters of competitive supremacy, better workers 10 
and merchants than any in the world. Aside from the , 
duties laid upon articles which we do not, and probably 
cannot, produce, therefore, and the duties laid upon lux- 
uries and merely for the sake of the revenues they yield, 
the object of the tariff duties henceforth laid must be 15 
effective competition, the whetting of American wits by 
contest with the wits of the rest of the world. 

It would be unwise to move toward this end headlong, 
with reckless haste, or with strokes that cut at the very 
roots of what has grown up amongst us by long process 20 
and at our own invitation. It does not alter a thing to 
upset it and break it and deprive it of a chance to change. 
It destroys it. We must make changes in our fiscal laws, 
in our fiscal system, whose object is development, a more 
free and wholesome development, not revolution or upset 25 
or confusion. We must build up trade, especially foreign 
trade. We need the outlet and the enlarged field of energy 
more than we ever did before. We must build up indus- 
try as well, and must adopt freedom in the place of arti- 
ficial stimulation only so far as it will build, not pull so 
down. In dealing with the tariff the method by which 
this may be done will be a matter of judgment, exercised 
item by item. To some not accustomed to the excite- 
ments and responsibilities of greater freedom our methods 



12 Woodrow Wilson 

may in some respects and at some points seem heroic, but 
remedies may be heroic and yet be remedies. It is our 
business to make sure that they are genuine remedies. 
Our object is clear. If our motive is above just challenge 

5 and only an occasional error of judgment is chargeable 
against us, we shall be fortunate. 

We are called upon to render the country a great serv- 
ice in more matters than one. Our responsibility should 
be met and our methods should be thorough, as thorough 

10 as moderate and well considered, based upon the facts 
as they are, and not worked out as if we were beginners. 
We are to deal with the facts of our own day, with the 
facts of no other, and to make laws which square with 
those facts. It is best, indeed it is necessary, to begin with 

15 the tariff. I will urge nothing upon you now at the open- 
ing of your session which can obscure that first object 
or divert our energies from that clearly defined duty. 
At a later time I may take the liberty of calling your 
attention to reforms which should press close upon the 

20 heels of the tariff changes, if not accompany them, of 
which the chief is the reform of our banking and currency 
laws; but just now I refrain. For the present, I put these 
matters on one side and think only of this one thing — of 
the changes in our fiscal system which may best serve to 

25 open once more the free channels of prosperity to a great 
people whom we would serve to the utmost and through- 
out both rank and file. 
I thank you for your courtesy. 



ADDRESS ON THE BANKING SYSTEM 

[Delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, June 23, 
1913-] 

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Gentlemen of the 
Congress: 

It is under the compulsion of what seems to me a 
clear and imperative duty that I have a second time this 
session sought the privilege of addressing you in person, s 
I know, of course, that the heated season of the year is 
upon us, that work in these chambers and in the com- 
mittee rooms is likely to become a burden as the season 
lengthens, and that every consideration of personal con- 
venience and personal comfort, perhaps, in the cases of 10 
some of us, considerations of personal health even, dictate 
an early conclusion of the deliberations of the session; 
but there are occasions of public duty when these things 
which touch us privately seem very small, when the work 
to be done is so pressing and so fraught with big conse- 15 
quence that we know that we are not at liberty to weigh 
against it any point of personal sacrifice. We are now in 
the presence of such an occasion. It is absolutely impera- 
tive that we should give the business men of this country a 
banking and currency system by means of which they 20 
can make use of the freedom of enterprise and of indi- 
vidual initiative which we are about to bestow upon them. 

We are about to set them free; we must not leave them 
without the tools of action when they are free. We are 
about to set them free by removing the trammels of the 25 
protective tariff. Ever since the Civil War they have 
waited for this emancipation and for the free opportuni- 

13 



14 Woodrow Wilson 

ties it will bring with it. It has been reserved for us to 
give it to them. Some fell in love, indeed, with the sloth- 
ful security of their dependence upon the Government; 
some took advantage of the shelter of the nursery to set 
5 up a mimic mastery of their own within its walls. Now 
both the tonic and the discipline of liberty and maturity 
are to ensue. There will be some readjustments of purpose 
and point of view. There will follow a period of expan- 
sion and new enterprise, freshly conceived. It is for us to 

lo determine now whether it shall be rapid and facile and of 
easy accomplishment. This it cannot be unless the re- 
sourceful business men who are to deal with the new cir- 
cumstances are to have at hand and ready for use the 
instrumentalities and conveniences of free enterprise 

15 which independent men need when acting on their own 
initiative. 

It is not enough to strike the shackles from business. 
The duty of statesmanship is not negative merely. It is 
constructive also. We must show that we understand 

20 what business needs and that we know how to supply it. 
No man, however casual and superficial his observation 
of the conditions now prevailing in the country, can fail 
to see that one of the chief things business needs now, and 
will need increasingly as it gains in scope and vigor in the 

25 years immediately ahead of us, is the proper means by 
which readily to vitalize its credit, corporate and indi- 
vidual, and its originative brains. What will it profit us 
to be free if we are not to have the best and most ac- 
cessible instrumentalities of commerce and enterprise? 

30 What will it profit us to be quit of one kind of monopoly 
if we are to remain in the grip of another and more effec- 
tive kind? How are we to gain and keep the confidence 
of the business community unless we show that we know 
how both to aid and to protect it? What shall we say if 



On the Banking System 15 

we make fresh enterprise necessary and also make it very 
difficult by leaving all else except the tariff just as we found 
it? The tyrannies of business, big and little, lie within 
the field of credit. We know that. Shall we not act upon 
the knowledge? Do we not know how to act upon it? If 5 
a man cannot make his assets available at pleasure, his 
assets of capacity and character and resource, what satis- 
faction is it to him to see opportunity beckoning to him 
on every hand, when others have the keys of credit in 
their pockets and treat them as all but their own private 10 
possession? It is perfectly clear that it is our duty to 
supply the new banking and currency system the country 
needs, and it will need it immediately more than it has 
ever needed it before. 

The only question is, When shall we supply it — now, or 15 
later, after the demands shall have become reproaches 
that we were so dull and so slow? Shall we hasten to 
change the tariff laws and then be laggards about making 
it possible and easy for the country to take advantage of 
the change? There can be only one answer to that ques- 20 
tion. We must act now, at whatever sacrifice to ourselves. 
It is a duty which the circumstances forbid us to postpone. 
I should be recreant to my deepest convictions of public 
obligation did I not press it upon you with solemn and 
urgent insistence. ~5 

The principles upon which we should act are also clear. 
The country has sought and seen its path in this matter 
within the last few years— sees it more clearly now than 
it ever saw it before — much more clearly than when the 
last legislative proposals on the subject were made. We 30 
must have a currency, not rigid as now, but readily, elas- 
tically responsive to sound credit, the expanding and con- 
tracting credits of everyday transactions, the normal ebb 
and flow of personal and corporate dealings. Our banking 



l6 Woodrow Wilson 

laws must mobilize reserves; must not permit the concen- 
tration anyw^here in a few hands of the monetary resources 
of the country or their use for speculative purposes in 
such volume as to hinder or impede or stand in the way 

5 of other more legitimate, more fruitful uses. And the 
control of the system of banking and of issue which our 
new laws are to set up must be public, not private, must 
be vested in the Government itself, so that the banks may 
be the instruments, not the masters, of business and of 

10 individual enterprise and initiative. 

The committees of the Congress to which legislation of 
this character is referred have devoted careful and dis- 
passionate study to the means of accomplishing these ob- 
jects. They have honored me by consulting me. They 

15 are ready to suggest action. I have come to you, as the 
head of the Government and the responsible leader of the 
party in power, to urge action now, while there is time to 
serve the country deliberately and as we should, in a clear 
air of common counsel. I appeal to you with a deep con- 

20 viction of duty. I believe that you share this conviction. 
I therefore appeal to you with confidence. I am at your 
service without reserve to play my part in any way you 
may call upon me to play it in this great enterprise of 
exigent reform which it will dignify and distinguish us to 

25 perform and discredit us to neglect. 



ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG 

[Delivered in the presence of Union and Confederate veterans, on 
the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the battle, July 4, 1913.] 

Friends and Fellow Citizens: 

I need not tell you what the Battle of Gettysburg 
meant. These gallant men in blue and gray sit all about 
us here.* Many of them met upon this ground in grim 
and deadly struggle. Upon these famous fields and hill- 5 
sides their comrades died about them. In their presence 
it were an impertinence to discourse upon how the battle 
went, how it ended, what it signified! But fifty years 
have gone by since then, and I crave the privilege of 
speaking to you for a few minutes of what those fifty ^° 
years have meant. 

What have they meant? They have meant peace and 
union and vigor, and the maturity and might of a great 
nation. Flow wholesome and healing the peace has been ! 
We have found one another again as brothers and com- ^5 
rades in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, 
our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten— except that 
we shall not forget the splendid valor, the manly devotion 
of the men then arrayed against one another, now grasp- 
ing hands and smiling into each other's eyes. How com- 20 
plete the union has become and how dear to all of us, 
how unquestioned, how benign and majestic, as State 
after State has been added to this our great family of free 
men! How handsome the vigor, the maturity, the might 
of the great Nation we love with undivided hearts; how 25 
full of large and confident promise that a life will be 

* The speech was made from a rostrum in the National Cemetery, 
on the battlefield. 

17 



1 8 Woodrow Wilson 

wrought out that will crown its strength with gracious 
justice and with a happy welfare that will touch all alike 
with deep contentment! We are debtors to those fifty 
crowded years; they have made us heirs to a mighty 

5 heritage. 

But do we deem the Nation complete and finished? 
These venerable men crowding here to this famous field 
have set us a great example of devotion and utter sacrifice. 
They were willing to die that the people might live. But 

lo their task is done. Their day is turned into evening. They 
look to us to perfect what they established. Their work 
is handed on to us, to be done in another way, but not in 
another spirit. Our day is not over; it is upon us in full 
tide. 

15 Have affairs paused? Does the Nation stand still? 
Is what the fifty years have wrought since those days of 
battle finished, rounded out, and completed? Here is a 
great people, great with every force that has ever beaten 
in the lifeblood of mankind. And it is secure. There is 

20 no one within its borders, there is no power among the 
nations of the earth, to make it afraid. But has it yet 
squared itself with its own great standards set up at its 
birth, when it made that first noble, .naive appeal to the 
moral judgment of mankind to take notice that a govem- 

25 ment had now at last been established which was to serve 
men, not masters? It is secure in everything except the 
satisfaction that its life is right, adjusted to the uttermost 
to the standards of righteousness and humanity. The 
days of sacrifice and cleansing are not closed. We have 

30 harder things to do than were done in the heroic days of 
war, because harder to see clearly, requiring more vision, 
more calm balance of judgment, a more candid searching 
of the very springs of right. 

Look around you upon the field of Gettysburg! Pic- 



Address at Gettysburg 19 

lure the array, the fierce heats and agony of battle, column 
hurled against column, battery bellowing to battery! 
Valor? Yes! Greater no man shall see in war; and self- 
sacrifice, and loss to the uttermost; the high recklessness of 
exalted devotion which does not count the cost. We are s 
made by these tragic, epic things to know what it costs 
to make a nation — the blood and sacrifice of multitudes 
of unknown men lifted to a great stature in the view of 
all generations by knowing no limit to their manly willing- 
ness to serve. In armies thus marshaled from the ranks 10 
of free men you will see, as it were, sl nation embattled, 
the leaders and the led, and may know, if you will, how 
little except in form its action differs in days of peace 
from its action in days of war. 

May we break camp now and be at ease? Are the 15 
forces that fight for the Nation dispersed, disbanded, 
gone to their homes forgetful of the common cause? Are 
our forces disorganized, without constituted leaders and 
the might of men consciously united because we contend, 
not with armies, but with principalities and powers and 20 
wickedness in high places? Are we content to lie still? 
Does our union mean sympathy, our peace contentment, 
our vigor right action, our maturity self-comprehension 
and a clear confidence in choosing what we shall do? 
War fitted us for action, and action never ceases. 25 

I have been chosen the leader of the Nation. I can- 
not justify the choice by any qualities of my own, but 
so it has come about, and here I stand. Whom do I com- 
mand? The ghostly hosts who fought upon these battle- 
fields long ago and are gone? These gallant gentlemen 30 
stricken in years whose fighting days are over, their glory 
won? What are the orders for them, and who rallies them? 
I have in my mind another host, whom these set free of 
civil strife in order that they might work out in days of 



20 Woodrow Wilson 

peace and settled order the life of a great Nation. That 
host is the people themselves, the great and the small, 
without class or difference of kind or race or origin; and 
undivided in interest, if we have but the vision to guide 

5 and direct them and order their lives aright in what we do. 
Our constitutions are their articles of enlistment. The 
orders of the day are the laws upon our statute books. 
What we strive for is their freedom, their right to lift 
themselves from day to day and behold the things they 

lo have hoped for, and so make way for still better days 
for those whom they love who are to come after them. 
The recruits are the little children crowding in. The 
quartermaster's stores are in the mines and forests and 
fields, in the shops and factories. Every day something 

15 must be done to push the campaign forward; and it must 
be done by plan and with an eye to some great destiny. 

How shall we hold such thoughts in our hearts and not 
be moved? I would not have you live even to-day w^holly 
in the past, but would wish to stand with you in the light 

20 that streams upon us now out of that great day gone by. 
Here is the nation God has builded by our hands. What 
shall we do with it? Who stands ready to act again and 
always in the spirit of this day of reunion and hope and 
patriotic fervor? The day of our country's life has but 

25 broadened into morning. Do not put uniforms by. Put 
the harness of the present on. Lift your eyes to the great 
tracts of life yet to be conquered in the interest of right- 
eous peace, of that prosperity which lies in a people's 
hearts and outlasts all wars and errors of men. Come, 

30 let us be comrades and soldiers yet to serve our fellow- 
men in quiet counsel, where the blare of trumpets is neither 
heard nor heeded and where the things are done which 
make blessed the nations of the world in peace and right- 
eousness and love. 



ADDRESS ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS 

[Delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, Au- 
gust 27, 1913.] 

Gentlemen of the Congress: 

It is clearly my duty to lay before you, very fully and 
without reservation, the facts concerning our present rela- 
tions with the Republic of Mexico. The deplorable pos- 
ture of affairs in Mexico I need not describe,* but I deem 5 
it my duty to speak very frankly of what this Govern- 
ment has done and should seek to do in fulfillment of its 
obligation to Mexico herself, as a friend and neighbor, 
and to American citizens whose lives and vital interests 
are daily affected by the distressing conditions which now 10 
obtain beyond our southern border. 

Those conditions touch us very nearly. Not merely be- 
cause they lie at our very doors. That of course makes 
us more vividly and more constantly conscious of them, 
and every instinct of neighborly interest and sympathy is j- 
aroused and quickened by them; but that is only one ele- 
ment in the determination of our duty. We are glad to 
call ourselves the friends of Mexico, and we shall, I hope, 
have many an occasion, in happier times as well as in 
these days of trouble and confusion, to show that our 20 
friendship is genuine and disinterested, capable of sacrifice 

* General Victoriano Huerta had, on Feb. 18, deposed President 
Madero, and had been, on the 20th, elected President b}^ the ISIexican 
Congress. Three days later :Madero was assassinated while in the 
custody of the new government. An army calling themselves Con- 
stitutionalists under General Villa, defeated the Mexican Federal 
forces in IMay. On August 20, Huerta declined the proposal of the 
United States government that he should cease to be a candidate 
for the Presidency. 

21 



22 Woodrow Wilson 

and every generous manifestation. The peace, prosperity, 
and contentment of Mexico mean more, much more, to 
us than merely an enlarged field for our commerce and 
enterprise. They mean an enlargement of the field of self- 

5 government and the realization of the hopes and rights of 
a nation with whose best aspirations, so long suppressed 
and disappointed, we deeply sympathize. We shall yet 
prove to the Mexican people that we know how to serve 
them without first thinking how we shall serve ourselves. 

lo But we are not the only friends of Mexico. The whoh 
world desires her peace and progress; and the whole world 
is interested as never before. Mexico lies at last where 
all the world looks on. Central America is about to be 
touched by the great routes of the world's trade and inter- 

15 course running free from ocean to ocean at the Isthmus. 
The future has much in store for Mexico, as for all th3 
States of Central America; but the best gifts can come to 
her only if she be ready and free to receive them and to 
enjoy them honorably. America in particular — America 

20 north and south and upon both continents — waits upon 
the development of Mexico; and that development can 
be sound and lasting only if it be the product of a genuine 
freedom, a just and ordered government founded upon 
law. Only so can it be peaceful or fruitful of the benefits 

25 of peace. Mexico has a great and enviable future before 
her, if only she choose and attain the paths of honest con- 
stitutional government. 

The present circumstances of the Republic, I deeply 
regret to say, do not seem to promise even the founda- 

30 tions of such a peace. We have waited many months, 
months full of peril and anxiety, for the conditions there 
■ to improve, and they have not improved. They have 
grown worse, rather. The territory in some sort con- 
trolled by the provisional authorities at Mexico City has 



On Mexican Affairs 23 

> 

grown smaller, not larger. The prospect of the pacifica- 
tion of the country, even by arms, has seemed to grow more 
and more remote; and its pacification by the authorities 
at the capital is evidently impossible by any other means 
than force. Difficulties more and more entangle those 5 
who claim to constitute the legitimate government of the 
Republic. They have not made good their claim in .fact. 
Their successes in the field have proved only temporary. 
War and disorder, devastation and confusion, seem to 
threaten to become the settled fortune of the distracted 10 
country. As friends we could wait no longer for a solution 
which every week seemed further away. It was our duty 
at least to volunteer our good offices — to offer to assist, 
if we might, in effecting some arrangement whicTi would 
bring relief and peace and set up a universally acknowl- 15 
edged political authority there. 

Accordingly, I took the liberty of sending the Hon. John 
Lind, formerly governor of Minnesota, as my personal 
spokesman and representative, to the City of Mexico, 
with the following instructions: 20 

Press very earnestly upon the attention of those who are 
now exercising authority or wielding influence in Mexico the 
following considerations and advice: 

The Government of the United States does not feel at liberty 
any longer to stand inactively by while it becomes daily more 25 
and more evident that no real progress is being made towards 
the establishment of a government at the City of Mexico which 
the country will obey and respect. 

The Government of the United States does not stand m the 
same case with the other great Governments of the world m 
respect of what is happening or what is likely to happen m 30 
Mexico. We offer our good offices, not only because of our 
genuine desire to play the part of a friend, but also because we 
are expected by the powers of the world to act as Mexico s 

nearest friend. • • c u 

We wish to act in these circumstances in the spirit ot the 35 



24 Wood row Wilson 

most earnest and disinterested friendship. It is our purpose in 
whatever we do or propose in this perplexing and distressing 
situation not only to pay the most scrupulous regard to the 
sovereignty and independence of Mexico — that we take as a 
5 matter of course to which we are bound by every obhgation of 
right and honor — but also to give every possible evidence that 
we act in the interest of Mexico alone, and not in the interest 
of any person or body of persons who may have personal or 
property claims in Mexico which they may feel that they have 

lo the right to press. We are seeking to counsel Mexico for her 
own good and in the interest of her own peace, and not for any 
other purpose whatever. The Government of the United States 
would deem itself discredited if it had any selfish or ulterior pur- 
pose in transactions where the peace, happiness, and prosperity 

15 of a whole people are involved. It is acting as its friendship for 
Mexico, not as any selfish interest, dictates. 

The present situation in Mexico is incompatible with the 
fulfillment of international obligations on the part of Mexico, 
with the civilized development of Mexico herself, and with the 

20 maintenance of tolerable political and economic conditions in 
Central America. It is upon no common occasion, therefore, 
that the United States offers her counsel and assistance. All 
America cries out for a settlement. 

A satisfactory settlement seems to us to be conditioned on — 

25 (a) An immediate cessation of fighting throughout Mexico, 
a definite armistice solemnly entered into and scrupulously ob- 
served; 

(b) Security given for an early and free election in which all 
will agree to take part; 

30 (c) The consent of Gen. Huerta to bind himself not to be a 
candidate for election as President of the Republic at this elec- 
tion; and 

(d) The agreement of all parties to abide by the results of 
the election and cooperate in the most loyal way in organizing 

35 and supporting the new administration. 

The Government of the United States will be glad to play 
any part in this settlement or in its carrying out which it can 
play honorably and consistently with international right. It 
pledges itself to recognize and in every way possible and proper 

40 to assist the administration chosen and set up in Mexico in the 
way and on the conditions suggested. 



On Mexican Affairs 25 

Taking all the existing conditions into consideration, the 
Government of the United States can conceive of no reasons 
sufficient to justify those who are now attempting to shape the 
policy or exercise the authority of Mexico in declining the 
offices of friendship thus offered. Can Mexico give the civilized 5 
world a satisfactory reason for rejecting our good offices? If 
Mexico can suggest any better way in which to show our friend- 
ship, serve the people of Mexico, and meet our international 
obhgations, we are more than wilHng to consider the suggestion. 

Mr. Lind executed his delicate and difficult mission with 10 
singular tact, firmness, and good judgment, and made 
clear to the authorities at the City of Mexico not only the 
purpose of his visit but also the spirit in which it had been 
undertaken. But the proposals he submitted were re- 
jected, in a note the full text of which I take the liberty 15 
of laying before you. 

I am led to believe that they were rejected partly be- 
cause the authorities at Mexico City had been grossly 
misinformed and misled upon tw^o points. They did not 
realize the spirit of the American people in this matter, 20 
their earnest friendliness and yet sober determination 
that some just solution be found for the Mexican difficul- 
ties; and they did not believe that the present administra- 
tion spoke, through Mr. Lind, for the people of the United 
States. The effect of this unfortunate misunderstanding 25 
on their part is to leave them singularly isolated and 
without friends who can effectually aid them. So long as 
the misunderstanding continues we can only await the 
time of their awakening to a realization of the actual facts. 
We cannot thrust our good offices upon them. The situa- 30 
tion must be given a little more time to work itself out in 
the new circumstances; and I believe that only a little 
while will be necessary. For the circumstances are new. 
The rejection of our friendship makes them new and will 
inevitably bring its own alterations in the whole aspect of 35 



26 Wood row Wilson 

affairs. The actual situation of the authorities at Mexico 
City will presently be revealed. 

Meanwhile, what is it our duty to do? Clearly, every- 
thing that we do must be rooted in patience and done 

5 with calm and disinterested deliberation. Impatience on 
our part would be childish, and would be fraught with 
every risk of ^^Tong and folly. We can afford to exercise 
the self-restraint of a really great nation which realizes 
its own strength and scorns to misuse it. It was our duty 

lo to offer our active assistance. It is now our duty to show 
what true neutrality will do to enable the people of Mexico 
to set their affairs in order again and wait for a further 
opportunity to offer our friendly counsels. The door is 
not closed against the resumption, either upon the ini- 

15 tiative of Mexico or upon our own, of the effort to bring 
order out of the confusion by friendly cooperative action, 
should fortunate occasion offer. 

While we wait the contest of the rival forces will un- 
doubtedly for a little while be sharper than ever, just 

20 because it will be plain that an end must be made of the 
existing situation, and that very promptly; and with the 
increased activity of the contending factions will come, it 
is to be feared, increased danger to the non-combatants in 
Mexico as well as to those actually in the field of battle. 

25 The position of outsiders is always particularly trying and 
full of hazard where there is civil strife and a whole coun- 
try is upset. We should earnestly urge all Americans to 
leave Mexico at once, and should assist them to get away 
in every way possible — not because we would jnean to 

30 slacken in the least our efforts to safeguard their lives and 
their interests, but because it is imperative that they 
should take no unnecessary risks when it is physically 
possible for them to leave the country. We should let 
every one who assumes to exercise authority in any part 



On Mexican Affairs 27 

of Mexico know in the most unequivocal way that we 
shall vigilantly watch the fortunes of those Americans 
who cannot get away, and shall hold those responsible 
for their sufferings and losses to a definite reckoning. 
That can be and will be made plain beyond the possibility 5 
of a misunderstanding. 

For the rest, I deem it my duty to exercise the authority 
conferred upon me by the law of March 14, 1Q12, to see 
to it that neither side to the struggle now going on in 
Mexico receive any assistance from this side the border. 10 
I shall follow the best practice of nations in the matter of 
neutrality by forbidding the exportation of arms or muni- 
tions of war of any kind from the United States to any 
part of the Republic of Mexico — a policy suggested by 
several interesting precedents and certainly dictated by 15 
many manifest considerations of practical expediency. 
We cannot in the circumstances be the partisans of either 
party to the contest that now distracts Mexico, or con- 
stitute ourselves the virtual umpire between them. 

I am happy to say that several of the great Govern- 20 
ments of the world have given this Government their 
generous moral support in urging upon the provisional 
authorities at the City of Mexico the acceptance of our 
proffered good offices in the spirit in which they were 
made. We have not acted in this matter under the or- 25 
dinary principles of international obligation. All the 
world expects us in such circumstances to act as Mexico's 
nearest friend and intimate adviser. This is our im- 
memorial relation towards her. There is nowhere any 
serious question that we have the moral right in the case 30 
or that we are acting in the interest of a fair settlement and 
of good government, not for the promotion of some selfish 
interest of our own. If further motive were necessary 
than our own good will towards a sister Republic and our 



28 Woodrow Wilson 

own deep concern to see peace and order prevail in Central 
America, this consent of mankind to what we are at- 
tempting, this attitude of the great nations of the world 
towards what we may attempt in dealing with this dis- 

5 tressed people at our doors, should make us feel the more 
solemnly bound to go to the utmost length of patience and 
forbearance in this painful and anxious business. The 
steady pressure of moral force will before many days break 
the barriers of pride and prejudice down, and we shall 

lo triumph as Mexico's friends sooner than we could triumph 
as her enemies — and how much more handsomely, with 
how much higher and finer satisfactions of conscience and 
of honor! 



UNDERSTANDING AMERICA 

[Delivered at Philadelphia, Pa., on the occasion of the rededication 
of Congress Hall, Oct. 25, 1913. The United States Congress met 
in this hall till 1800. Here Washington was inaugurated the second 
time, and here he made his farewell address to the American people. 
Here John Adams took the oath of office when he succeeded Wash- 
ington. The hall, after being long disused, was now restored and 
reopened. Before Mr. Wilson spoke, Mr. Frank Miles Day, repre- 
senting the committee of architects, had referred to the "delightful 
silence, order, gravity, and personal dignity of manner" observed 
by the Senators of the first Congress, and had said, "They all ap- 
peared every morning full powdered, and dressed, as age or fancy 
might suggest, in the richest material."] 

Your Honor, Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen: 
No American could stand in this place to-day and think 
of the circumstances which we are come together to cele- 
brate without being most profoundly stirred. There 
has come over me since I sat down here a sense of deep 5 
solemnity, because it has seemed to me that I saw ghosts 
crowding — a great assemblage of spirits, no longer visible, 
but whose influence we still feel as we feel the molding 
power of history itself. The men who sat in this hall, to 
whom we now look back with a touch of deep sentiment, 10 
were men of flesh and blood, face to face with extremely 
difficult problems. The population of the United States 
then was hardly three times the present population of 
the city of Philadelphia, and yet that was a Nation as 
this is a Nation, and the men who spoke for it were setting 15 
their hands to a work which was to last, not only that 
their people might be happy, but that an example might 
be lifted up for the instruction of the rest of the world. 

I like to read the quaint old accounts such as Mr. Day 
has read to us this afternoon. Strangers came then to 20 

29 



3© Woodrow Wilson 

America to see what the young people that had sprung 
up here were like, and they found men in counsel who 
knew how to construct governments. They found men 
deliberating here who had none of the appearance of 
5 novices, none of the hesitation of men who did not know 
whether the work they were doing was going to last or 
not; men who addressed themselves to a problem of 
construction as familiarly as we attempt to carry out the 
traditions of a Government established these 137 years. 

10 I feel to-day the compulsion of these men, the compul- 
sion of examples which were set up in this place. And of 
what do their examples remind us? They remind us not 
merely of public service but of public service shot through 
with principle and honor. They were not histrionic men. 

15 They did not say — 

Look upon us as upon those who shall hereafter be illustrious. 

They said: 

Look upon us who are doing the first free work of constitu- 
tional liberty in the world, and who must do it in soberness and 
20 truth, or it will not last. 

Politics, ladies and gentlemen, is made up in just about 
equal parts of comprehension and sympathy. No man 
ought to go into politics who does not comprehend the 
task that he is going to attack. He may comprehend it 

25 so completely that it daunts him, that he doubts whether 
his own spirit is stout enough and his own mind able 
enough to attempt its great undertakings, but unless he 
comprehend it he ought not to enter it. After he has 
comprehended it, there should come into his mind those 

30 profound impulses of sympathy which connect him with 
the rest of mankind, for politics is a business of interpreta- 
tion, and no men are fit for it who do not see and seek more 
than their own advantage and interest. 



Understanding America 31 

We have stumbled upon many unhappy circumstances 
in the hundred years that have gone by since the event 
that we are celebrating. Almost all of them have come 
from self-centered men, men who saw in their own interest 
the interest of the country, and who did not have vision 5 
enough to read it in wider terms, in the universal terms 
of equity and justice and the rights of mankind. I hear 
a great many people at Fourth of July celebrations laud 
the Declaration of Independence who in between Julys 
shiver at the plain language of our bills of rights. The 10 
Declaration of Independence was, indeed, the first audible 
breath of liberty, but the substance of liberty is written 
in such documents as the declaration of rights attached, 
for example, to the first constitution of Virginia, which 
was a model for the similar documents read elsewhere 15 
into our great fundamental charters. That document 
speaks in very plain terms. The men of that generation 
did not hesitate to say that every people has a right to 
choose its own forms of government — not once, but as 
often as it pleases — ^and to accommodate those forms of 20 
government to its existing interests and circumstances. 
Not only to establish but to alter is the fundamental 
principle of self-government. 

We are just as much under compulsion to study the 
particular circumstances of our own day as the gentlemen 25 
were who sat in this hall and set us precedents, not of 
what to do but of how to do it. Liberty inheres in the 
circumstances of the day. Human happiness consists 
in the life which human beings are leading at the time that 
they live. I can feed my memory as happily upon the 30 
circumstances of the revolutionary and constitutional 
period as you can, but I cannot feed all my purposes 
with them in Washington now. Every day problems 
arise which wear some new phase and aspect, and I must 



32 Woodrow Wilson 

fall back, if I would serve my conscience, upon those things 
which are fundamental rather than upon those things 
which are superficial, and ask myself this question. How 
are you going to assist in some small part to give the 
5 American people and, by example, the peoples of the 
world more Uberty, more happiness, more substantial 
prosperity; and how are you going to make that prosper- 
ity a common heritage instead of a selfish possession? 
I came here to-day partly in order to feed my own spirit. I 

lo did not come in compliment. When I was asked to come 
I knew immediately upon the utterance of the invita- 
tion that I had to come, that to be absent would be as if 
I refused to drink once more at the original fountains of 
inspiration for our own Government. 

15 The men of the day which we now celebrate had a very 
great advantage over us, ladies and gentlemen, in this 
one particular: Life was simple in America then. All 
men shared the same circumstances in almost equal de- 
gree. We think of Washington, for example, as an aristo- 

20 crat, as a man separated by training, separated by family 
and neighborhood tradition, from the ordinary people 
of the rank and file of the country. Have you forgotten 
the personal history of George Washington? Do you 
not know that he struggled as poor boys now struggle 

25 for a meager and imperfect education; that he worked at 
his surveyor's tasks in the lonely forests; that he knew 
all the roughness, all the hardships, all the adventure, 
all the variety of the common life of that day; and that 
if he stood a little stifily in this place, if he looked a little 

30 aloof, it was because life had dealt hardly with him? All 
his sinews had been stiffened by the rough work of making 
America. He was a man of the people, whose touch had 
been with them since the day he saw the light first in the 
old Dominion of Virginia. And the men who came after 



Understanding America 33 

him, men, some of whom had drunk deep at the sources 
of philosophy and of study, were, nevertheless, also men 
who on this side of the water knew no complicated life 
but the simple life of primitive neighborhoods. Our task 
is very much more difficult. That sympathy which alone 5 
interprets public duty is more difficult for a public man 
to acquire now than it was then, because we live in the 
midst of circumstances and conditions infinitely complex. 
No man can boast that he understands America. No 
man can boast that he has lived the life of America, as 10 
almost every man who sat in this hall in those days could 
boast. No man can pretend that except by common 
counsel he can gather into his consciousness what the 
varied life of this people is. The duty that we have to 
keep open eyes and open hearts and accessible understand- 15 
ings is a very much more difficult duty to perform than 
it was in their day. Yet how much more important that 
it should be performed, for fear we make infinite and ir- 
reparable blunders. The city of Washington is in some 
respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what 20 
the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count 
it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows 
of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied 
spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomac and then 
out into Virginia and on to the heavens themselves, and 25 
that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and 
remember the United States. Not that I would intimate 
that all of the United States lies south of Washington, 
but there is a serious thing back of my thought. If you 
think too much about being reelected, it is very difficult 30 
to be worth reelecting. You are so apt to forget that the 
comparatively small number of persons, numerous as 
they seem to be when they swarm, who come to Washing- 
ton to ask for things, do not constitute an important 



34 Woodrow Wilson 

proportion of the population of the country, tliat it is 
constantly necessary to come away from Washington and 
renew one's contact with the people who do not swarm 
there, who do not ask for anything, but who do trust you 
5 without their personal counsel to do your duty. Unless 
a man gets these contacts he grows weaker and weaker. 
He needs them as Hercules needed the touch of mother 
earth. If you lift him up too high or he lifts himself too 
high, he loses the contact and therefore loses the in- 

jo spiration. 

I love to think of those plain men, however far from 
plain their dress sometimes was, who assembled in this 
hall. One is startled to think of the variety of costume 
and color which would now occur if we were let loose 

15 upon the fashions of that age. IMen's lack of taste is 
largely concealed now by the limitations of fashion. Yet 
these men, who sometimes dressed like the peacock, were, 
nevertheless, of the ordinary flight of their time. They 
were birds of a feather; they were birds come from a very 

20 simple breeding; they were much in the open heaven. 
They were beginning, when there was so little to distract 
their attention, to show that they could live upon funda- 
mental principles of government. We talk those princi- 
ples, but we have not time to absorb them. We have not 

25 time to let them into our blood, and thence have them 
translated into the plain mandates of action. 

The very smallness of this room, the very simplicity of 
it all, all the suggestions which come from its restoration, 
are reassuring things — things which it becomes a man to 

30 realize. Therefore my theme here to-day, my only thought, 
is a very simple one. Do not let us go back to the annals 
of those sessions of Congress to find out what to do, be- 
cause we live in another age and the circumstances are 
absolutely different; but let us be men of that kind; let 



Understanding America 35 

us feel at every turn the compulsions of principle and of 
honor which thy felt; let us free our vision from temporary 
circumstances and look abroad at the horizon and take 
into our lungs the great air of freedom which has blown 
through this country and stolen across the seas and blessed 
people everywhere; and, looking east and west and north 
and south, let us remind ourselves that we are the custo- 
dians, in some degree, of the principles which have made 
men free and governments just. 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE SOUTHERN COMMER- 
CIAL CONGRESS 

[Delivered at Mobile, Alabama, October 27, 1913.] 

Your Excellency, Mr. Chairman: 

It is with unaffected pleasure that I find myself here 
to-day. I once before had the pleasure, in another south- 
ern city, of addressing the Southern Commercial Con- 

5 gress. I then spoke of what the future seemed to hold in 
store for this region, which so many of us love and toward 
the future of which we all look forward with so much con- 
fidence and hope. But another theme directed me here 
this time. I do not need to speak of the South. She has, 

10 perhaps, acquired the gift of speaking for herself. I come 
because I want to speak of our present and prospective 
relations with our neighbors to the south. I deemed it a 
public duty, as well as a personal pleasure, to be here to 
express for myself and for the Government I represent 

15 the welcome we all feel to those who represent the Latin- 
American States. 

The future, ladies and gentlemen, is going to be very 
different for this hemisphere from the past. These States 
lying to the south of us, which have always been our neigh- 

20 bors, will now be drawn closer to us by innumerable ties, 
and, I hope, chief of all by the tie of a common under- 
standing of each other. Interest does not tie nations to- 
gether; it sometimes separates them. But sympathy and 
understanding does unite them, and I beheve that by the 

25 new route that is just about to be opened, while we physic- 
ally cut two continents asunder, we spiritually unite them. 
It is a spiritual union which we seek. 

36 



The Southern Commercial Congress 37 

I wonder if you realize, I wonder if your imaginations 
have been filled with the significance of the tides of com- 
merce. Your Governor alluded in very fit and striking 
terms to the voyage of Columbus, but Columbus took his 
voyage under compulsion of circumstances. Constan- 5 
tinople had been captured by the Turks, and all the 
routes of trade with the East had been suddenly closed. 
If there was not a way across the Atlantic to open those 
routes again, they were closed forever; and Columbus set 
out not to discover America, for he did not know that it 10 
existed, but to discover the eastern shores of Asia. He 
set sail for Cathay and stumbled upon America. With 
that change in the outlook of the world, what happened? 
England, that had been at the back of Europe with an 
unknown sea behind her, found that all things had turned 15 
as if upon a pivot and she was at the front of Europe; and 
since then all the tides of energy and enterprise that have 
issued out of Europe have seemed to be turned westward 
across the Atlantic. But you will notice that they have 
turned westward chiefly north of the Equator, and that 20 
it is the northern half of the globe that has seemed to be 
filled with the media of intercourse and of sympathy and 
of common understanding. 

Do you not see now what is about to happen? These 
great tides which have been running along parallels of 25 
latitude will now swing southward athwart parallels of 
latitude, and that opening gate at the Isthmus of Panama 
will open the world to a commerce that she has not known 
before, a commerce of inteUigence, of thought, and sym- 
pathy between North and South. The Latin-American 30 
States which, to their disadvantage, have been off the 
main lines will now be on the main lines. I feel that these 
gentlemen honoring us with their presence to-day will 
presently find that some part, at any rate, of the center 



38 Wood row Wilson 

of gravity of the world has shifted. Do you realize that 
New York, for example, will be nearer the western coast 
of South America than she is now to the eastern coast of 
South America? Do you realize that a line drawn north- 
5 ward parallel with the greater part of the western coast of 
South America will run only about one hundred and fifty 
miles west of New York? The great bulk of South America, 
if you will look at your globes (not at your Mercator's pro- 
jection), lies eastward of the continent of North America. 

10 You will realize that when you realize that the canal w^ill 
run southeast, not southwest, and that when you get into 
the Pacific you will be farther east then you were when 
you left the Gulf of Mexico. These things are significant, 
therefore, of this, that we are closing one chapter in the 

15 history of the world and are opening another of great, 
unimaginable significance. 

There is one peculiarity about the history of the Latin- 
American States which I am sure they are keenly aware 
of. You hear of ''concessions" to foreign capitaKsts in 

20 Latin America. You do not hear of concessions to foreign 
capitalists in the United States. They are not granted 
concessions. They are invited to make investments. 
The work is ours, though they are welcome to invest in it. 
We do not ask them to supply the capital and do the work. 

25 It is an invitation, not a privilege; and States that are 
obliged, because their territory does not lie within the 
main field of modern enterprise and action, to grant con- 
cessions are in this condition, that foreign interests are 
apt to dominate their domestic affairs, a condition of 

30 affairs always dangerous and apt to become intolerable. 
What these States are going to see, therefore, is an emanci- 
pation from the subordination, which has been inevitable, 
to foreign enterprise and an assertion of the splendid 
character which, in spite of these difficulties, they have 



The Southern Commercial Congress 39 

again and again been able to demonstrate. The dignity, 
the courage, the self-possession, the self-respect of the 
Latin-American States, their achievements in the face of 
all these adverse circumstances, deserve nothing but the 
admiration and applause of the world. They have had s 
harder bargains driven with them in the matter of loans 
than any other peoples in the world. Interest has been 
exacted of them that was not exacted of anybody else, 
because the risk was said to be greater; and then securities 
were taken that destroyed the risk — an admirable ar- 10 
rangement for those who were forcing the terms! I re- 
joice in nothing so much as in the prospect that they will 
now be emancipated from these conditions; and we ought 
to be the first to take part in assisting in that emancipa- 
tion. I think some of these gentlemen have already had 15 
occasion to bear witness that the Department of State in 
recent months has tried to serve them in that wise. In 
the future they will draw closer and closer to us because 
of circumstances of which I wish to speak with moderation 
and, I hope, without indiscretion. 20 

We must prove ourselves their friends and champions 
upon terms of equality and honor. You cannot be friends 
upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality. 
You cannot be friends at all except upon the terms of 
honor. We must show ourselves friends by comprehend- 25 
ing their interest whether it squares with our own interest 
or not. It is a very perilous thing to determine the foreign 
policy of a nation in the terms of material interest. ^ It 
not only is unfair to those with whom you are dealing, 
but it is degrading as regards your own actions. 30 

Comprehension must be the soil in w^hich shall grow 
all the fruits of friendship, and there is a reason and a 
compulsion lying behind all this which is dearer than any- 
thing else to the thoughtful men of America. I mean the 



40 Woodrow Wilson 

development of constitutional liberty in the world. Hu- 
man rights, national integrity, and opportunity as against 
material interests — that, ladies and gentlemen, is the issue 
which we now have to face. I want to take this occasion 
5 to say that the United States will never again seek one 
additional foot of territory by conquest. She will devote 
herself to showing that she knows how to make honorable 
and fruitful use of the territory she has, and she must re- 
gard it as one of the duties of friendship to see that from 

lo no quarter are material interests made superior to human 
liberty and national opportunity. I say this, not with a 
single thought that anyone will gainsay it, but merely to 
fix in our consciousness what our real relationship with the 
rest of America is. It is the relationship of a family of 

15 mankind devoted to the development of true constitu- 
tional liberty. We know that that is the soil out of which 
the best enterprise springs. We know that this is a cause 
which we are making in common with our neighbors, be- 
cause we have had to make it for ourselves. 

20 Reference has been made here to-day to some of the na- 
tional problems which confront us as a nation. What is 
at the heart of all our national problems? It is that we 
have seen the hand of material interest sometimes about to 
close upon our dearest rights and possessions. We have 

25 seen material interests threaten constitutional freedom in 
the United States. Therefore we wdll now know how to 
sympathize with those in the rest of America who have to 
contend with such powers, not only within their borders 
but from outside their borders also. 

30 I know what the response of the thought and heart of 
America will be to the program I have outlined, because 
America was created to realize a program like that. This 
is not America because it is rich. This is not America be- 
cause it has set up for a great population great opportuni- 



The Southern Commercial Congress 41 

ties of material prosperity. America is a name which 
sounds in the ears of men everywhere as a synonym with 
individual opportunity because a synonym of individual 
liberty. I would rather belong to a poor nation that was 
free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love 5 
with liberty. But we shall not be poor if we love liberty, 
because the nation that loves liberty truly sets every man 
free to do his best and be his best, and that means the 
release of all the splendid energies of a great people who 
think for themselves. A nation of employees cannot be 10 
free any more than a nation of employers can be. 

In emphasizing the points which must unite us in sym- 
pathy and in spiritual interest with the Latin-American 
peoples we are only emphasizing the points of our own life, 
and we should prove ourselves untrue to our own tradi- 15 
tions if we proved ourselves untrue friends to them. Do 
not think, therefore, gentlemen, that the questions of the 
day are mere questions of policy and diplomacy. They 
are shot through with the principles of life. We dare not 
turn from the principle that morality and not expediency 20 
is the thing that must guide us and that we will never con- 
done iniquity because it is most convenient to do so. It 
seems to me that this is a day of infinite hope, of confidence 
in a future greater than the past has been, for I am fain 
to beUeve that in spite of all the things that we wish to 25 
correct the nineteenth century that now lies behind us has 
brought us a long stage toward the time when, slowly as- 
cending the tedious climb that leads to the final uplands, 
we shall get our ultimate view of the duties of mankind. 
We have breasted a considerable part of that climb and 30 
shall presently— it may be in a generation or two— come 
out upon those great heights where there shines unob- 
structed the light of the justice of God. 



THE STATE OF THE UNION 

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, 
December 2, 1913.] 

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Gentlemen of the 
Congress: 
In pursuance of my constitutional duty to "give to the 
Congress information of the state of the Union," I take 

5 the liberty of addressing you on several matters which 
ought, as it seems to me, particularly to engage the atten- 
tion of your honorable bodies, as of all who study the 
welfare and progress of the Nation. 

I shall ask your indulgence if I venture to depart in 

ID some degree from the usual custom of setting before you 
in formal review the many matters which have engaged 
the attention and called for the action of the several de- 
partments of the Government or which look to them for 
early treatment in the future, because the list is long, 

15 very long, and would suffer in the abbreviation to which 
I should have to subject it. I shall submit to you the 
reports of the heads of the several departments, in which 
these subjects are set forth in careful detail, and beg that 
they may receive the thoughtful attention of your com- 

20 mittees and of all Members of the Congress who may have 
the leisure to study them. Their obvious importance, as 
constituting the very substance of the business of the 
Government, makes comment and emphasis on my part 
unnecessary. 

25 The country, I am thankful to say, is at peace with all 
the world, and many happy manifestations multiply 
about us of a growing cordiality and sense of community 

42 



The State of the Union 43 

of interest among the nations, foreshadowing an age of 
settled peace and good will. More and more readily each 
decade do the nations manifest their willingness to bind 
themselves by solemn treaty to the processes of peace, 
the processes of frankness and fair concession. So far the 5 
United States has stood at the front of such negotiations. 
She will, I earnestly hope and confidently believe, give fresh 
proof of her sincere adherence to the cause of interna- 
tional friendship by ratifying the several treaties of ar- 
bitration awaiting renewal by the Senate. In addition 10 
to these, it has been the privilege of the Department of 
State to gain the assent, in principle, of no less than thirty- 
one nations, representing four-fifths of the population of the 
world, to the negotiation of treaties by which it shall 
be agreed that whenever differences of interest or of 15 
policy arise which cannot be resolved by the ordinary 
processes of diplomacy they shall be publicly analyzed, 
discussed, and reported upon by a tribunal chosen by 
the parties before either nation determines its course 
of action. 20 

There is only one possible standard by which to deter- 
mine controversies between the United States and other 
nations, and that is compounded of these two elements: 
Our own honor and our obligations to the peace of the 
world. A test so compounded ought easily to be made to 25 
govern both the establishment of new treaty obligations 
and the interpretation of those already assumed. 

There is but one cloud upon our horizon. That has 
shown itself to the south of us, and hangs over Mexico. 
There can be no certain prospect of peace in America until 30 
Gen. Huerta has surrendered his usurped authority in 
Mexico; until it is understood on all hands, indeed, that 
such pretended governments will not be countenanced 
or dealt with by the Government of the United States. 



44 Wood row Wilson 

We are the friends of constitutional government in Amer- 
ica; we are more than its friends, we are its champions; 
because in no other way can our neighbors, to whom we 
would wish in every way to make proof of our friendship, 

5 work out their own development in peace and liberty. 
Mexico has no Government. The attempt to maintain 
one at the City of Mexico has broken down, and a mere 
military despotism has been set up which has hardly more 
than the semblance of national authority. It originated 

lo in the usurpation of Victoriano Huerta, who, after a brief 
attempt to play the part of constitutional President, has 
at last cast aside even the pretense of legal right and de- 
clared himself dictator. As a consequence, a condition of 
affairs now exists in Mexico which has made it doubtful 

15 whether even the most elementary and fundamental rights 
either of her own people or of the citizens of other coun- 
tries resident within her territory can long be successfully 
safeguarded, and which threatens, if long continued, to 
imperil the interests of peace, order, and tolerable life in 

20 the lands immediately to the south of us. Even if the 
usurper had succeeded in his purposes, in despite of the 
constitution of the Republic and the rights of its people, 
he would have set up nothing but a precarious and hateful 
power, vrhich could have lasted but a little while, and 

25 whose eventual downfall would have left the country in a 
more deplorable condition than ever. But he has not 
succeeded. He has forfeited the respect and the moral 
support even of those who were at one time willing to see 
him succeed. Little by little he has been completely 

30 isolated. By a little every day his power and prestige are 
crumbling and the collapse is not far away. We shall 
not, I believe, be obliged to alter our policy of watchful 
waiting. And then, when the end comes, we shall hope to 
gee constitutional order restored in distressed Mexico by 



The State of the Union 45 

the concert and energy of such of her leaders as prefer the 
Hberty of their people to their own ambitions. 

I turn to matters of domestic concern. You already 
have under consideration a bill for the reform of our system 
of banking and currency, for which the country waits with 5 
impatience, as for something fundamental to its whole 
business life and necessary to set credit free from arbitrary 
and artificial restraints. I need not say how earnestly 
I hope for its early enactment into law. I take leave to 
beg that the whole energy and attention of the Senate be 10 
concentrated upon it till the matter is successfully disposed 
of. And yet I feel that the request is not needed — that 
the Members of that great House need no urging in this 
service to the country. 

I present to you, in addition, the urgent necessity that 15 
special provision be made also for facihtating the credits 
needed by the farmers of the country. The pending cur- 
rency bill does the farmers a great service. It puts them 
upon an equal footing with other business men and masters 
of enterprise, as it should; and upon its passage they will 20 
find themselves quit of many of the difficulties which now 
hamper them in the field of credit. The farmers, of course, 
ask and should be given no special privilege, such as ex- 
tending to them the credit of the Government itself. 
What they need and should obtain is legislation which will 25 
make their own abundant and substantial credit resources 
available as a foundation for joint, concerted local action 
in their own behalf in getting the capital they must use. 
It is to this we should now address ourselves. 

It has, singularly enough, come to pass that we have 30 
allowed the industry of our farms to lag behind the other 
activities of the country in its development. I need not 
stop to tell you how fundamental to the life of the Nation 
is the production of its food. Our thoughts may ordinarily 



46 Woodrow Wilson 

be concentrated upon the cities and the hives of industry, 
upon the cries of the crowded market place and the clangor 
of the factory, but it is from the quiet interspaces of the 
open valleys and the free hillsides that we draw the sources 
5 of life and of prosperity, from the farm and the ranch, from 
the forest and the mine. Without these every street 
would be silent, every office deserted, every factory fallen 
into disrepair. And yet the farmer does not stand upon 
the same footing with the forester and the miner in the 

10 market of credit. He is the servant of the seasons. Nature 
determines how long he must wait for his crops, and will 
not be hurried in her processes. He may give his note, 
but the season of its maturity depends upon the season 
when his crop matures, lies at the gates of the market where 

15 his products are sold. And the security he gives is of a 
character not known in the broker's office or as familiarly 
as it might be on the counter of the banker. 

The Agricultural Department of the Government is 
seeking to assist as never before to make farming an 

20 efficient business, of wide cooperative effort, in quick touch 
with the markets for foodstuffs. The farmers and the 
Government will henceforth work together as real partners 
in this field, where we now begin to see our way very clearly 
and where many intelligent plans are already being put 

25 into execution. The Treasury of the United States has, by 
a timely and well-considered distribution of its deposits, 
facilitated the moving of the crops in the present season 
and prevented the scarcity of available funds too often 
experienced at such times. But we must not allow our- 

30 selves to depend upon extraordinary expedients. We must 
add the means by which the farmer may make his credit 
constantly and easily available and command when he 
will the capital by which to support and expand his busi- 
ness. We lag behind many other great countries of the 



The State of the Union 47 

modern world in attempting to do this. Systems of rural 
credit have been studied and developed on the other side 
of the water while we left our farmers to shift for them- 
selves in the ordinary money market. You have but to 
look about you in any rural district to see the result, the 5 
handicap and embarrassment which have been put upon 
those who produce our food. 

Conscious of this backwardness and neglect on our part, 
the Congress recently authorized the creation of a special 
commission to study the various systems of rural credit 10 
which have been put into operation in Europe, and this 
commission is already prepared to report. Its report ought 
to make it easier for us to determine what methods will 
be best suited to our own farmers. I hope and believe that 
the committees of the Senate and House will address them- 15 
selves to this matter with the most fruitful results, and I 
believe that the studies and recently formed plans of the 
Department of Agriculture may be made to serve them 
very greatly in their work of framing appropriate and 
adequate legislation. It would be indiscreet and pre- 20 
sumptuous in anyone to dogmatize upon so great and 
many-sided a question, but I feel confident that common 
counsel will produce the results we must all desire. 

Turn from the farm to the world of business which cen- 
ters in the city and in the factory, and I think that all 25 
thoughtful observers will agree that the immediate service 
we owe the business communities of the country is to 
prevent private monopoly more effectually than it has 
yet been prevented. I think it will be easily agreed that 
we should let the Sherman antitrust law stand, unaltered, 30 
as it is, with its debatable ground about it, but that we 
should as much as possible reduce the area of that de- 
batable ground by further and more explicit legislation; 
and should also supplement that great act by legislation 



48 Woodrow Wilson 

which will not only clarify it but also facilitate its adminis- 
tration and make it fairer to all concerned. No doubt we 
shall all wish, and the country will expect, this to be the 
central subject of our deliberations during the present 

5 session; but it is a subject so many-sided and so deserving 
of careful and discriminating discussion that I shall take 
the liberty of addressing you upon it in a special message 
at a later date than this. It is of capital importance that 
the business men of this country should be relieved of all 

10 uncertainties of law with regard to their enterprises and 
investments and a clear path indicated which they can 
travel without anxiety. It is as important that they 
should be relieved of embarrassment and set free to 
prosper as that private monopoly should be destroyed. 

15 The ways of action should be thrown wide open. 

I turn to a subject which I hope can be handled promptly 
and without serious controversy of any kind. I mean the 
method of selecting nominees for the Presidency of the 
United States. I feel confident that I do not misinterpret 

20 the wishes or the expectations of the country when I urge 
the prompt enactment of legislation which will provide for 
primary elections throughout the country at which the 
voters of the several parties may choose their nominees for 
the Presidency without the intervention of nominating 

25 conventions. I venture the suggestion that this legislation 
should provide for the retention of party conventions, but 
only for the purpose of declaring and accepting the verdict 
of the primaries and formulating the platforms of the 
parties; and I suggest that these conventions should con- 

30 sist not of delegates chosen for this single purpose, but of 
the nominees for Congress, the nominees for vacant seats 
in the Senate of the United States, the Senators whose 
terms have not yet closed, the national committees, and 
the candidates for the Presidency themselves, in order that 



The State of the Union 49 

platforms may be framed by those responsible to the 
people for carrying them into effect. 

These are all matters of vital domestic concern, and 
besides them, outside the charmed circle of our own na- 
tional life in which our affections command us, as well as 5 
our consciences, there stand out our obligations toward our 
territories over sea. Here we are trustees. Porto Rico, 
Hawaii, the Philippines, are ours, indeed, but not ours to 
do what we please with. Such territories, once regarded as 
mere possessions, are no longer to be selfishly exploited; 10 
they are part of the domain of public conscience and of 
serviceable and enlightened statesmanship. We must ad- 
minister them for the people who live in them and with 
the same sense of responsibility to them as toward our 
own people in our domestic affairs. No doubt we shall 15 
successfully enough bind Porto Rico and the Hawaiian 
Islands to ourselves by ties of justice and interest and 
affection, but the performance of our duty toward the 
Philippines is a more difficult and debatable matter. We 
can satisfy the obligations of generous justice toward the 20 
people of Porto Rico by giving them the ample and 
familiar rights and privileges accorded our own citizens in 
our own territories and our obligations toward the people 
of Hawaii by perfecting the provisions for self-government 
already granted them, but in the Philippines we must go 25 
further. We must hold steadily in view their ultimate 
independence, and we must move toward the time of that 
independence as steadily as the way can be cleared and the 
foundations thoughtfully and permanently laid. 

Acting under the authority conferred upon the Presi- 30 
dent by Congress, I have already accorded the people of 
the islands a majority in both houses of their legislative 
body by appointing five instead of four native citizens 
to the membership of the commission. I believe that in 



50 Woodrovv Wilson 

this way we shall make proof of their capacity in counsel 
and their sense of responsibility in the exercise of political 
power, and that the success of this step will be sure to 
clear our view for the steps which are to follow. Step by 
5 step we should extend and perfect the system of self- 
government in the islands, making test of them and modify- 
ing them as experience discloses their successes and their 
failures; that we should more and more put under the 
control of the native citizens of the archipelago the essen- 

lo tial instruments of their life, their local instrumentalities 
of government, their schools, all the common interests 
of their communities, and so by counsel and experience 
set up a government which all the world will see to be 
suitable to a people whose affairs are under their own 

15 control. At last, I hope and believe, we are beginning to 
gain the confidence of the Filipino peoples. By their 
counsel and experience, rather than by our own, we shall 
learn how best to serve them and how soon it will be 
possible and wise to withdraw our supervision. Let us 

20 once find the path and set out with firm and confident 
tread upon it and we shall not wander from it or linger 
upon it. 

A duty faces us with regard to Alaska which seems to 
me very pressing and very imperative; perhaps I should 

25 say a double duty, for it concerns both the political and 
the material development of the Territory. The people 
of Alaska should be given the full Territorial form of 
government, and Alaska, as a storehouse, should be un- 
locked. One key to it is a system of railways. These the 

30 Government should itself build and administer, and the 
ports and terminals it should itself control in the interest 
of all who wish to use them for the service and develop- 
ment of the country and its people. 
But the construction of railways is only the first step; 



The State of the Union 51 

is only thrusting in the key to the storehouse and throwing 
back the lock and opening the door. How the tempting 
resources of the country are to be exploited is another 
matter, to which I shall take the liberty of from time to 
time calling your attention, for it is a policy which must 5 
be worked out by well-considered stages, not upon theory, 
but upon lines of practical expediency. It is part of our 
general problem of conservation. We have a freer hand 
in working out the problem in Alaska than in the States 
of the Union; and yet the principle and object are the 10 
same, wherever we touch it. We must use the resources 
of the country, not lock them up. There need be no con- 
flict or jealousy as between State and Federal authorities, 
for there can be no essential difference of purpose between 
them. The resources in question must be used, but not 15 
destroyed or wasted; used, but not monopolized upon 
any narrow idea of individual rights as against the abiding 
interests of communities. That a policy can be worked 
out by conference and concession which will release these 
resources and yet not jeopard or dissipate them, I for 20 
one have no doubt; and it can be done on lines of regula- 
tion which need be no less acceptable to the people and 
governments of the States concerned than to the people 
and Government of the Nation at large, whose heritagie 
these resources are. We must bend our counsels to this 25 
end. A common purpose ought to make agreement easy. 

Three or four matters of special importance and sig- 
nificance I beg that you will permit me to mention in 
closing. 

Our Bureau of Mines ought to be equipped and em- 30 
powered to render even more effectual service than it 
renders now in improving the conditions of mine labor 
and making the mines more economically productive as 
well as more safe. This is an all-important part of the 



52 Woodrow Wilson 

work of conservation; and the conservation of human 
life and energy lies even nearer to our interest than the 
preservation from waste of our material resources. 

We owe it, in mere justice to the railway employees of 
5 the country, to provide for them a fair and effective em- 
ployers' liability act; and a law that we can stand by in 
this matter will be no less to the advantage of those who 
administer the railroads of the country than to the ad- 
vantage of those whom they employ. The experience of a 

10 large number of the States abundantly proves that. 

We ought to devote ourselves to meeting pressing de- 
mands of plain justice like this as earnestly as to the ac- 
complishment of political and economic reforms. Social 
justice comes first. Law is the machinery for its realiza- 

15 tion and is vital only as it expresses and embodies it. 

An international congress for the discussion of all 
questions that affect safety at sea is now sitting in London 
at the suggestion of our own Government. So soon as 
the conclusions of that congress can be learned and con- 

20 sidered we ought to address ourselves, among other things, 
to the prompt alleviation of the very unsafe, unjust, and 
burdensome conditions which now surround the employ- 
ment of sailors and render it extremely difficult to obtain 
the services of spirited and competent men such as every 

25 ship needs if it is to be safely handled and brought to port. 
May I not express the very real pleasure I have ex- 
perienced in cooperating with this Congress and sharing 
with it the labors of common service to which it has de- 
voted itself so unreservedly during the past seven months 

30 of uncomplaining concentration upon the business of 
legislation? Surely it is a proper and pertinent part of 
my report on ''the state of the Union" to express my 
admiration for the diligence, the good temper, and the 
full comprehension of public duty which has already been 



The State of the Union 53 

manifested by both the Houses; and I hope that it may 
not be deemed an impertinent intrusion of myself into 
the picture if I say with how much and how constant 
satisfaction I have availed myself of the privilege of put- 
ting my time and energy at their disposal alike in counsel 
and in action. 



TRUSTS AND MONOPOLIES 

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, 
January 20, 19 14.] 

Gentlemen of the Congress: 

In my report "on the state of the Union," which I had 
the privilege of reading to you on the 2d of December 
last, I ventured to reserve for discussion at a later date 

5 the subject of additional legislation regarding the very 
difficult and intricate matter of trusts and monopolies. 
The time now seems opportune to turn to that great 
question; not only because the currency legislation, which 
absorbed your attention and the attention of the country 

10 in December, is now disposed of, but also because opinion 
seems to be clearing about us with singular rapidity in 
this other great field of action. In the matter of the cur- 
rency it cleared suddenly and very happily after the 
much-debated Act was passed; in respect of the monopo- 

15 lies which have multiplied about us and in regard to the 
various means by which they have been organized and 
maintained it seems to be coming to a clear and all but 
universal agreement in anticipation of our action, as if 
by way of preparation, making the way easier to see and 

20 easier to set out upon with confidence and without con- 
fusion of counsel. 

Legislation has its atmosphere like everything else, 
and the atmosphere of accommodation and mutual under- 
standing which we now breathe with so much refresh- 

25 ment is matter of 'sincere congratulation. It ought to 
make our task very much less difficult and embarrassing 
than it would have been had we been obliged to continue 

54 



Trusts and Monopolies 55 

to act amidst the atmosphere of suspicion and antagonism 
which has so long made it impossible to approach such 
questions with dispassionate fairness. Constructive legis- 
lation, when successful, is always the embodiment of 
convincing experience, and of the mature public opinion 5 
which finally springs out of that experience. Legislation 
is a business of interpretation, not of origination; and 
it is now plain what the opinion is to which we must 
give effect in this matter. It is not recent or hasty opinion. 
It springs out of the experience of a whole generation. 10 
It has clarified itself by long contest, and those who for 
a long time battled with it and sought to change it are 
now frankly and honorably yielding to it and seeking 
to conform their actions to it. 

The great business men who organized and financed 15 
monopoly and those who administered it in actual every- 
day transactions have year after year, until now, either 
denied its existence or justified it as necessary for the 
effective maintenance and development of the vast busi- 
ness processes of the country in the modern circumstances 20 
of trade and manufacture and finance; but all the while 
opinion has made head against them. The average busi- 
ness man is convinced that the ways of liberty are also 
the ways of peace and the ways of success as well; and 
at last the masters of business on the great scale have 25 
begun to yield their preference and purpose, perhaps their 
judgment also, in honorable surrender. 

What we are purposing to do, therefore, is, happily, 
not to hamper or interfere with business as enlightened 
business men prefer to do it, or in any sense to put it 30 
under the ban. The antagonism between business and 
government is over. We are now about to give expres- 
sion to the best business judgment of America, to what 
we know to be the business conscience and honor of the 



56 Wood row Wilson 

land. The Government and business men are ready to 
meet each other half-way in a common effort to square 
business methods with both public opinion and the law. 
The best informed men of the business world condemn 
5 the methods and processes and consequences of monopoly 
as we condemn them; and the instinctive judgment of 
the vast majority of business men everywhere goes with 
them. We shall now be their spokesmen. That is the 
strength of our position and the sure prophecy of what 

10 will ensue when our reasonable work is done. 

When serious contest ends, when men unite in opinion 
and purpose, those who are to change their ways of busi- 
ness joining with those who ask for the change, it is pos- 
sible to effect it in the way in which prudent and thought- 

15 ful and patriotic men would wish to see it brought about 
with as few, as slight, as easy and simple business read- 
justments as possible in the circumstances, nothing essen- 
tial disturbed, nothing torn up by the roots, no parts 
rent asunder which can be left in wholesome combina- 

20 tion. Fortunately, no measures of sweeping or novel 
change are necessary. It will be understood that our 
object is not to unsettle business or anywhere seriously 
to break its established courses athwart. On the con- 
trary, we desire the laws we are now about to pass to be 

25 the bulwarks and safeguards of industry against the forces 
that have disturbed it. What we have to do can be done 
in a new spirit, in thoughtful moderation, without revolu- 
tion of any untoward kind. 

We are all agreed that "private monopoly is inde- 

30 fensible and intolerable," and our program is founded 
upon that conviction. It will be a comprehensive but 
not a radical or unacceptable program and these are 
its items, the changes which opinion deliberately sanctions 
and for which business waits: 



Trusts and Monopolies 57 

It waits with acquiescence, in the first place, for laws 
which will effectually prohibit and prevent such inter- 
lockings of the personnel of the directorates of great cor- 
porations — banks and railroads, industrial, commercial, 
and public service bodies — as in effect result in making 5 
those who borrow and those who lend practically one and 
the same, those who sell and those who buy but the same 
persons trading with one another under different names 
and in different combinations, and those who affect to 
compete in fact partners and masters of some whole field 10 
of business. Sufficient time should be allowed, of course, 
in which to effect these changes of organization without 
inconvenience or confusion. 

Such a prohibition will w^ork much more than a mere 
negative good by correcting the serious evils which have 15 
arisen because, for example, the men who have been the 
directing spirits of the great investment banks have 
usurped the place which belongs to independent industrial 
management working in its own behoof. It will bring 
new men, new energies, a new spirit of initiative, new 20 
blood, into the management of our great business enter- 
prises. It will open the field of industrial development 
and origination to scores of men who have been obliged 
to serve when their abilities entitled them to direct. It 
will immensely hearten the young men coming on and will 25 
greatly enrich the business activities of the whole country. 

In the second place, business men as well as those who 
direct public affairs now recognize, and recognize with 
painful clearness, the great harm and injustice which 
has been done to many, if not all, of the great railroad 30 
systems of the country by the way in which they have 
been financed and their own distinctive interests sub- 
ordinated to the interests of the men who financed them 
and of other business enterprises which those men wished 



5 8 Wood row Wilson 

to promote. The country is ready, therefore, to accept, 
and accept with reHef as well as approval, a law which 
will confer upon the Interstate Commerce Commission 
the power to superintend and regulate the financial opera- 

5 tions by which the railroads are henceforth to be supplied 
with the money they need for their proper development 
to meet the rapidly growing requirements of the country 
for increased and improved facilities of transportation. 
We cannot postpone action in this matter without leaving 

lo the railroads exposed to many serious handicaps and 
hazards; and the prosperity of the railroads and the pros- 
perity of the country are inseparably connected. Upon 
this question those who are chiefly responsible for the 
actual management and operation of the railroads have 

15 spoken very plainly and very earnestly, with a purpose we 
ought to be quick to accept. It will be one step, and a very 
important one, toward the necessary separation of the busi- 
ness of production from the business of transportation. 
The business of the country awaits also, has long awaited 

2o and has suffered because it could not obtain, further and 
more explicit legislative definition of the policy and mean- 
ing of the existing antitrust law. Nothing hampers busi- 
ness like uncertainty. Nothing daunts or discourages it 
like the necessity to take chances, to run the risk of falling 

25 under the condemnation of the law before it can make 
sure just what the law is. Surely we are sufficiently 
familiar with the actual processes and methods of monop- 
oly and of the many hurtful restraints of trade to make 
definition possible, at any rate up to the limits of what 

30 exj)erience has disclosed. These practices, being now 
abundantly disclosed, can be explicitly and item by item 
forbidden by statute in such terms as will practically 
eliminate uncertainty, the law itself and the penalty being 
made equally plain. 



Trusts and Monopolies 59 

And the business men of the country desire something 
more than that the menace of legal process in these mat- 
ters be made explicit and intelligible. They desire the 
advice, the definite guidance and information which can 
be supplied by an administrative body, an interstate 5 
trade commission. 

The opinion of the country would instantly approve of 
such a commission. It would not wish to see it empowered 
to make terms with monopoly or in any sort to assume 
control of business, as if the Government made itself re- 10 
sponsible. It demands such a commission only as an in- 
dispensable instrument of information and publicity, as a 
clearing house for the facts by which both the public mind 
and the managers of great business undertakings should 
be guided, and as an instrumentality for doing justice to 15 
business where the processes of the courts or the natural 
forces of correction outside the courts are inadequate to 
adjust the remedy to the wrong in a way that will meet all 
the equities and circumstances of the case. 

Producing industries, for example, which have passed 20 
the point up to which combination may be consistent 
with the public interest and the freedom of trade, can- 
not always be dissected into their component units as 
readily as railroad companies or similar organizations can 
be. Their dissolution by ordinary legal process may often- 25 
times involve financial consequences likely to overwhelm 
the security market and bring upon it breakdown and 
confusion. There ought to be an administrative commis- 
sion capable of directing and shaping such corrective 
processes, not only in aid of the courts but also by inde- 30 
pendent suggestion, if necessary. 

Inasmuch as our object and the spirit of our action in 
these matters is to meet business half-way in its processes 
of self-correction and disturb its legitimate course as little 



6o Woodrovv Wilson 

as possible, we ought to see to it, and the judgment of 
practical and sagacious men of affairs everywhere would 
applaud us if we did see to it, that penalties and punish- 
ments should fall, not upon business itself, to its confusion 

5 and interruption, but upon the individuals who use the 
instrumentalities of business to do things which public 
policy and sound business practice condemn. Every act of 
business is done at the command or upon the initiative of 
some ascertainable person or group of persons. These 

10 should be held individually responsible and the punish- 
ment should fall upon them, not upon the business organi- 
zation of which they make illegal use. It should be one of 
the main objects of our legislation to divest such persons 
of their corporate cloak and deal with them as wdth those 

15 who do not represent their corporations, but merely by 
deliberate intention break the law. Business men the 
country through would, I am sure, applaud us if w^e w^ere to 
take effectual steps to see that the officers and directors of 
great business bodies were prevented from bringing them 

20 and the business of the country into disrepute and danger. 
Other questions remain which will need very thoughtful 
and practical treatment. Enterprises, in these modern 
days of great individual fortunes, are oftentimes inter- 
locked, not by being under the control of the same di- 

25 rectors, but by the fact that the greater part of their 
corporate stock is owned by a single person or group of 
persons who are in some way intimately related in interest. 
We are agreed, I take it, that holding companies should be 
prohibited, but what of the controlling private owTiership 

30 of individuals or actually cooperative groups of individ- 
uals? Shall the private owners of capital stock be suffered 
to be themselves in effect holding companies? We do not 
wish, I suppose, to forbid the purchase of stocks by any 
person who pleases to buy them in such quantities as he can 



Trusts and Monopolies 6i 

afford, or in any way arbitrarily to limit the sale of stocks 
to bona fide purchasers. Shall we require the owners of 
stock, when their voting power in several companies which 
ought to be independent of one another would constitute 
actual control, to make election in which of them they will 5 
exercise their right to vote? This question I venture for 
your consideration. 

There is another matter in which imperative considera- 
tions of justice and fair play suggest thoughtful remedial 
action. Not only do many of the combinations effected or 10 
sought to be effected in the industrial world work an in- 
justice upon the public in general; they also directly and 
seriously injure the individuals who are put out of business 
in one unfair way or another by the many dislodging and 
exterminating forces of combination. I hope that we shall 15 
agree in giving private individuals who claim to have been 
injured by these processes the right to found their suits for 
redress upon the facts and judgments proved and entered 
in suits by the Government where the Government has 
upon its o\\Ti initiative sued the combinations complained 20 
of and won its suit, and that the statute of limitations shall 
be suffered to run against such litigants only from the 
date of the conclusion of the Government's action. It is 
not fair that the private litigant should be obliged to set 
up and establish again the facts which the Government has 25 
proved. He cannot afford, he has not the power, to make 
use of such processes of inquiry as the Government has 
command of. Thus shall individual justice be done while 
the processes of business are rectified and squared with the 
general conscience. 30 

I have laid the case before you, no doubt as it lies in your 
own mind, as it lies in the thought of the country. What 
must every candid man say of the suggestions I have laid 
before you, of the plain obligations of which I have re- 



62 Wood row Wilson 

minded you? That these are new things for which the 
country is not prepared? No; but that they are old things, 
now familiar, and must of course be undertaken if we are to 
square our laws wdth the thought and desire of the country. 
5 Until these things are done, conscientious business men 
the country over will be unsatisfied. They are in these 
things our mentors and colleagues. We are now about to 
write the additional articles of our constitution of peace, 
the peace that is honor and freedom and prosperity. 



PANAMA CANAL TOLLS 

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, 
March 5, I9i4-1 

Gentlemen of the Congress: 

I have come to you upon an errand which can be very 
briefly performed, but I beg that you will not measure its 
importance by the number of sentences in which I state 
it. No communication I have addressed to the Congress 5 
carried with it graver or more far-reaching implications as 
to the interest of the country, and I come now to speak 
upon a matter with regard to which I am charged in a 
peculiar degree, by the Constitution itself, with personal 
responsibihty. ^ ^° 

I have come to ask you for the repeal of that provision 
of the Panama Canal Act of August 24, 1912, which ex- 
empts vessels engaged in the coastwise trade of the United 
States from payment of tolls, and to urge upon you the 
justice, the wisdom, and the large policy of such a repeal 15 
with the utmost earnestness of which I am capable. 

In my own judgment, very fully considered and ma- 
turely formed, that exemption constitutes a mistaken 
economic policy from every point of view, and is, more- 
over, in plain contravention of the treaty with Great 20 
Britain concerning the canal concluded on November 18, 
1901. But I have not come to urge upon you my personal 
views. I have come to state to you a fact and a situation. 
Whatever may be our own differences of opinion concern- 
ing this much debated measure, its meaning is not debated 25 
outside the United States. Everywhere else the language 
of the treaty is given but one interpretation, and that 

63 



64 Woodrow Wilson 

interpretation precludes the exemption I am asking you to 
repeal. We consented to the treaty; its language we ac- 
cepted, if we did not originate it; and we are too big, too 
powerful, too self-respecting a nation to interpret with a 
5 too strained or refined reading the words of our own 
promises just because we have power enough to give us 
leave to read them as we please. The large thing to do is 
the only thing we can afford to do, a voluntary with- 
drawal from a position everywhere questioned and mis- 

10 understood. We ought to reverse our action without 
raising the question whether we were right or wrong, and so 
once more deserve our reputation for generosity and for 
the redemption of every obligation without quibble or 
hesitation. 

15 I ask this of you in support of the foreign policy of the 
administration. I shall not know how to deal with other 
matters of even greater delicacy and nearer consequence if 
you do not grant it to me in ungrudging measure. 



THE TAMPICO INCIDENT 

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, 
April 20, 1914.] 

Gentlemen of the Congress: 

It is my duty to call your attention to a situation which 

has arisen in our dealings with General Victoriano Huerta 

at Mexico City which calls for action, and to ask your 

advice and cooperation in acting upon it. On the gth of 5 

April a paymaster of the U. S. S. Dolphin landed at the 

Iturbide Bridge landing at Tampico with a whaleboat and 

boat's crew to take off certain supplies needed by his ship, 

and while engaged in loading the boat was arrested by an 

officer and squad of men of the army of General Huerta. 10 

Neither the paymaster nor anyone of the boat's crew was 

armed. Two of the men were in the boat when the arrest 

took place and were obliged to leave it and submit to be 

taken into custody, notwithstanding the fact that the 

boat carried, both at her bow and at her stern, the flag of 15 

the United States. The officer who made the arrest was 

proceeding up one of the streets of the town with his 

prisoners when met by an officer of higher authority, who 

ordered him to return to the landing and await orders; 

and within an hour and a half from the time of the arrest 20 

orders were received from the commander of the Huertista 

forces at Tampico for the release of the paymaster and his 

men. The release was followed by apologies from the 

commander and later by an expression of regret by General 

Huerta himself. General Huerta urged that martial law 25 

obtained at the time at Tampico; that orders had been 

issued that no one should be allowed to land at the Itur- 



66 Woodrow Wilson 

bide Bridge; and that our sailors had no right to land there. 
Our naval commanders at the port had not been notified 
of any such prohibition; and, even if they had been, the 
only justifiable course open to the local authorities would 
5 have been to request the paymaster and his crew to with- 
draw and to lodge a protest with the commanding officer 
of the fleet. Admiral Mayo regarded the arrest as so 
serious an affront that he was not satisfied with the 
apologies offered, but demanded that the flag of the United 

10 States be saluted with special ceremony by the miUtary 
commander of the port. 

The incident cannot be regarded as a trivial one, espe- 
cially as two of the men arrested were taken from the boat 
itself — that is to say, from the territory of the United 

15 States — but had it stood by itself it might have been 
attributed to the ignorance or arrogance of a single officer. 
Unfortunately, it was not an isolated case. A series of 
incidents have recently occurred which cannot but create 
the impression that the representatives of General Huerta 

20 were willing to go out of their way to show disregard for the 
dignity and rights of this Government and felt perfectly 
safe in doing what they pleased, making free to show in 
many ways their irritation and contempt. A few days after 
the incident at Tampico an orderly from the U. S. S. 

25 Minnesota was arrested at Vera Cruz while ashore in 
uniform to obtain the ship's mail, and was for a time 
thrown into jail. An official dispatch from this Govern- 
ment to its embassy at Mexico City was withheld by the 
authorities of the telegraphic service until peremptorily 

30 demanded by our charge d'affaires in person. So far as 
I can learn, such wrongs and annoyances have been suffered 
to occur only against representatives of the United States. 
I have heard of no complaints from other Governments of 
similar treatment. Subsequent explanations and formal 



The Tampico Incident Gj 

apologies did not and could not alter the popular impres- 
sion, which it is possible it had been the object of the 
Huertista authorities to create, that the Government of 
the United States was being singled out, and might be 
singled out with impunity, for slights and affronts in 5 
retaliation for its refusal to recognize the pretensions of 
General Huerta to be regarded as the constitutional 
provisional President of the Republic of Mexico. 

The manifest danger of such a situation was that such 
offenses might grow from bad to worse until something 10 
happened of so gross and intolerable a sort as to lead di- 
rectly and inevitably to armed conflict. It was necessary 
that the apologies of General Huerta and his representa- 
tives should go much further, that they should be such 
as to attract the attention of the whole population to their 15 
significance, and such as to impress upon General Huerta 
himself the necessity of seeing to it that no further occasion 
for explanations and professed regrets should arise. I, 
therefore, felt it my duty to sustain Admiral Mayo in the 
whole of his demand and to insist that the flag of the 20 
United States should be saluted in such a way as to 
indicate a new spirit and attitude on the part of the 
Huertistas. 

Such a salute General Huerta has refused, and I have 
come to ask your approval and support in the course I now 25 
purpose to pursue. 

This Government can, I earnestly hope, in no circum- 
stances be forced into war with the people of Mexico. 
Mexico is torn by civil strife. If we are to accept the 
tests of its own constitution, it has no government. Gen- 30 
eral Huerta has set his power up in the City of Mexico, 
such as it is, without right and by methods for which there 
can be no justification. Only part of the country is under 
his control. If armed conflict should unhappily come as a 



68 Wood row Wilson 

result of his attitude of personal resentment toward this 
Government, we should be fighting only General Huerta 
and those who adhere to him and give him their support, 
and our object would be only to restore to the people of 
5 the distracted RepubHc the opportunity to set up again 
their own. laws and their own government. 

But I earnestly hope that war is not now in question. 
I believe that I speak for the American people when I say 
that we do not desire to control in any degree the affairs of 

lo our sister Republic. Our feehng for the people of Mexico 
is one of deep and genuine friendship, and everything that 
we have so far done or refrained from doing has proceeded 
from our desire to help them, not to hinder or embarrass 
them. We would not wish even to exercise the good offices 

15 of friendship without their welcome and consent. The 
people of Mexico are entitled to settle their own domestic 
affairs in their own way, and we sincerely desire to respect 
their right. The present situation need have none of the 
grave implications of interference if we deal with it 

20 promptly, firmly, and wisely. 

No doubt I could do what is necessary in the circum- 
stances to enforce respect for our Government without re- 
course to the Congress, and yet not exceed my constitu- 
tional powers as President; but I do not wish to act in a 

25 matter possibly of so grave consequence except in close 
conference and cooperation with both the Senate and 
House. I, therefore, come to ask your approval that I 
should use the armed forces of the United States in such 
ways and to such an extent a^ may be necessary to obtain 

30 from General Huerta and his adherents the fullest recogni- 
tion of the rights and dignity of the United States, even 
amidst the distressing conditions now unhappily obtaining 
in Mexico. 
There can in what we do be no thought of aggression or 



The Tampico Incident 69 

of selfish aggrandizement. We seek to maintain the 
dignity and authority of the United States only because we 
wish always to keep our great influence unimpaired for the 
uses of liberty, both in the United States and wherever else 
it may be employed for the benefit of mankind. 



IN THE FIRMAMENT OF MEMORY 

[Address at the Services in Memory of those who lost their lives 
at Vera Cruz, Mexico, delivered at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, May 1 1 , 
19 14. The roster, of fifteen sailors and four marines, was presented 
by the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Daniels.] 

Mr. Secretary: 

I know that the feelings which characterize all who 
stand about me and the whole Nation at this hour are 
not feelings which can be suitably expressed in terms of 

5 attempted oratory or eloquence. They are things too 
deep for ordinary speech. For my own part, I have a 
singular mixture of feelings. The feeling that is upper- 
most is one of profound grief that these lads should have 
had to go to their death; and yet there is mixed with that 

10 grief a profound pride that they should have gone as 
they did, and, if I may say it out of my heart, a touch of 
envy of those who were permitted so quietly, so nobly, 
to do their duty. Have you thought of it, men? Here 
is the roster of the Na\y — the list of the men, officers and 

15 enlisted men and marines — and suddenly there swim 
nineteen stars out of the list — men who have suddenly 
been lifted into a firmament of memory where we shall 
always see their names shine, not because they called 
upon us to admire them, but because they served us, 

20 without asking any questions and in the performance of a 
duty which is laid upon us as well as upon them. 

Duty is not an uncommon thing, gentlemen. Men are 
performing it in the ordinary walks of life all around us 
all the time, and they are making great sacrifices to per- 

25 form it. What gives men like these peculiar distinction 
is not merely that they did their duty, but that their duty 

70 



In the Firmament of Memory 71 

had nothing to do with them or their own personal and 
pecuhar interests. They did not give their Uves for them- 
selves. They gave their Uves for us, because we called 
upon them as a Nation to perform an unexpected duty. 
That is the way in which men grow distinguished, and ^ 
that is the only way, by serving somebody else than them- 
selves. And what greater thing could you serve than a 
Nation such as this we love and are proud of? Are you 
sorr^' for these lads? Are you sorry for the way they will 
be remembered? Does it not quicken your pulses to 10 
think of the list of them? I hope to God none of you 
may join the list, but if you do you will join an immortal 
company. 

So, while we are profoundly sorrowful, and while there 
goes out of our hearts a very deep and afTectionate sym- 15 
pathy for the friends and relatives of these lads who for 
the rest of their lives shall mourn them, though \\ith a 
touch of pride, we know why we do not go away from this 
occasion cast down, but with our heads lifted and our 
eyes on the future of this countr}^ with absolute confi- 20 
dence of how it will be worked out. Not only upon the 
mere vague future of this country, but upon the immediate 
future. We have gone do^Mi to Mexico to ser\'e mankind 
if we can find out the way. We do not want to fight the 
Mexicans. We w^ant to serv^e the Mexicans if we can, 25 
because we know how wt would like to be free, and how 
we would like to be served if there were friends standing 
by in such case ready to serve us. A war of aggression 
is not a war in which it is a proud thing to die, but a war 
of service is a thing in which it is a proud thing to die. 30 

Notice how truly these men were of our blood. I mean 
of our American blood, which is not drawn from any one 
country, which is not drawn from any one stock, which 
is not drawn from any one language of the modem world; 



72 Woodrow Wilson 

but free men everywhere have sent their sons and their 
brothers and their daughters to this country in order to 
make that great compounded Nation which consists of 
all the sturdy elements and of all the best elements of 

5 the whole globe. I listened again to this list of the dead 
with a profound interest because of the mixture of the 
names, for the names bear the marks of the several na- 
tional stocks from which these men came. But they are 
not Irishmen or Germans or Frenchmen or Hebrews or 

lo Italians any more. They were not when they went to Vera 
Cruz; they were Americans, every one of them, and with 
no difference in their Americanism because of the stock 
from which they came. They were in a peculiar sense 
of our blood, and they proved it by showing that they 

15 were of our spirit — that no matter what their derivation, 
no matter where their people came from, they thought 
and wished and did the things that were American; and 
the flag under which they served was a flag in which all 
the blood of mankind is united to make a free Nation. 

20 War, gentlemen, is only a sort of dramatic representa- 
tion, a sort of dramatic symbol, of a thousand forms of 
duty. I never w^ent into battle; I never was under fire; 
but I fancy that there are some things just as hard to do 
as to go under fire. I fancy that it is just as hard to do 

25 your duty when men are sneering at you as when they 
are shooting at you. When they shoot at you, they can 
only take your natural life; when they sneer at you, they 
can wound your living heart, and men who are brave 
enough, steadfast enough, steady in their principles 

so enough, to go about their duty with regard to their fellow- 
men, no matter whether there are hisses or cheers, men 
who can do what Rudyard Kipling in one of his poems 
wrote, "Meet with triumph and disaster and treat those 
two impostors just the same," are men for a nation to be 



In the Firmament of Memory 73 

proud of. Morally speaking, disaster and triumph are 
impostors. The cheers of the moment are not what a 
man ought to think about, but the verdict of his con- 
science and of the consciences of mankind. 

When I look at you, I feel as if I also and we all were 5 
enlisted men. Not enlisted in your particular branch 
of the service, but enlisted to serve the country, no matter 
what may come, even though we may sacrifice our lives 
in the arduous endeavor. We are expected to put the 
utmost energy of every power that we have into the serv- 10 
ice of our fellow-men, never sparing ourselves, not con- 
descending to think of what is going to happen to our- 
selves, but ready, if need be, to go to the utter length 
of complete self-sacrifice. 

As I stand and look at you to-day and think of these 15 
spirits that have gone from us, I know that the road is 
clearer for the future. These boys have shown us the 
way, and it is easier to walk on it because they have gone 
before and shown us how. May God grant to all of us 
that vision of patriotic service which here in solemnity 20 
and grief and pride is borne in upon our hearts and con- 
sciences ! 



MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 

[Delivered at the National Cemetery/ Arlington, Va., May 30, 
1914.] 

Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I have not come here to-day with a prepared address. 
The committee in charge of the exercises of the day have 
graciously excused me on the grounds of public obligations 

5 from preparing such an address, but I will not deny myself 
the privilege of joining with you in an expression of 
gratitude and admiration for the men who perished for the 
sake of the Union. They do not need our praise. They do 
not need that our admiration should sustain them. There 

10 is no immortality that is safer than theirs. We come not 
for their sakes but for our own, in order that we may drink 
at the same springs of inspiration from which they them- 
selves drank. 
A peculiar privilege came to the men who fought for the 

15 Union. There is no other civil war in history, ladies and 
gentlemen, the stings of which were removed before the 
men who did the fighting passed from the stage of life. 
So that we owe these men something more than a legal 
reestablishment of the Union. We owe them the spiritual 

20 reestabhshment of the Union as well; for they not only re- 
united States, they reunited the spirits of men. That is 
their unique achievement, unexampled anywhere else in 
the annals of mankind, that the very men whom they 
overcame in battle join in praise and gratitude that the 

25 Union was saved. There is something peculiarly beautiful 
and peculiarly touching about that. Whenever a man who 
is still trying to devote himself to the service of the Nation 

74 



Memorial Day at Arlington 75 

comes into a presence like this, or into a place like this, his 
spirit must be pecuHarly moved. A mandate is laid upon 
him which seems to speak from the very graves themselves. 
Those who serve this Nation, whether in peace or in war, 
should serve it without thought of themselves. I can never 5 
speak in praise of war, ladies and gentlemen; you would 
not desire me to do so. But there is this peculiar distinc- 
tion belonging to the soldier, that he goes into an enterprise 
out of which he himself cannot get anything at all. He is 
giving everything that he hath, even his life, in order that 10 
others may live, not in order that he himself may obtain 
gain and prosperity. And just so soon as the tasks of 
peace are performed in the same spirit of self-sacrifice and 
devotion, peace societies will not be necessary. The very 
organization and spirit of society will be a guaranty of peace. 15 

Therefore this peculiar thing comes about, that we can 
stand here and praise the memory of these soldiers in 
the interest of peace. They set us the example of self- 
sacrifice, which if followed in peace will make it unneces- 
sary that men should follow war any more. 20 

We are reputed to be somewhat careless in our dis- 
crimination between words in the use of the English 
language, and yet it is interesting to note that there are 
some words about which we are very careful. We bestow 
the adjective "great" somewhat indiscriminately. A 25 
man who has made conquest of his fellow-men for his own 
gain may display such genius in war, such uncommon 
qualities of organization and leadership that we may call 
him "great," but there is a word which we reserve for men 
of another kind and about which we are very careful; that 30 
is the word "noble." We never call a man "noble" who 
serves only himself; and if you will look about through all 
the nations of the world upon the statues that men have 
erected — upon the inscribed tablets where they have 



^G Wood row Wilson 

wished to keep alive the memory of the citizens whom they 
desire most to honor — you will find that almost without 
exception they have erected the statue to those who had a 
splendid surplus of energy and devotion to spend upon 

5 their fellow-men. Nobility exists in America without pat- 
ent. We have no House of Lords, but we have a house 
of fame to which we elevate those who are the noble men 
of our race, who, forgetful of themselves, study and serve 
the public interest, who have the courage to face any 

lo number and any kind of adversary, to speak what in their 
hearts they believe to be the truth. 

We admire physical courage, but we admire above all 
things else moral courage. I believe that soldiers will 
bear me out in saying that both come in time of battle. 

15 I take it that the moral courage comes in going into the 
battle, and the physical courage in staying in. There are 
battles which are just as hard to go into and just as hard 
to stay in as the battles of arms, and if the man will but 
stay and think never of himself there will come a time of 

20 grateful recollection when men will speak of him not only 
with admiration but with that which goes deeper, with 
affection and with reverence. 

So that this flag calls upon us daily for service, and the 
more quiet and self-denying the service the greater the 

25 glory of the flag. We are dedicated to freedom, and that 
freedom means the freedom of the human spirit. AH free 
spirits ought to congregate on an occasion like this to do 
homage to the greatness of America as illustrated by the 
greatness of her sons. 

30 It has been a privilege, ladies and gentlemen, to come 
and say these simple words, which I am sure are merely 
putting your thought into language. I thank you for the 
opportunity to lay this little wreath of mine upon these 
consecrated graves. 



CLOSING A CHAPTER 

[Address in which President Wilson accepted the Monument in 
Memory of the Confederate Dead, at Arlington National Cemetery, 
June 4, 1914.] 

Mr. Chairman, Mrs. McLaurin Stevens, Ladies and 

Gentlemen : 

I assure you that I am profoundly aware of the solemn 
significance of the thing that has now taken place. The 
Daughters of the Confederacy have presented a memorial s 
of their dead to the Government of the United States. I 
hope that you have noted the history of the conception 
of this idea. It was suggested by a President of the United 
States who had himself been a distinguished officer in the 
Union Army. It was authorized by an act of Congress 10 
of the United States. The corner-stone of the monument 
was laid by a President of the United States elevated to 
his position by the votes of the party which had chiefly 
prided itself upon sustaining the war for the Union, and 
who, while Secretary of War, had himself given authority 15 
to erect it. And, now, it has fallen to my lot to accept 
in the name of the great Government, which I am priv- 
ileged for the time to represent, this emblem of a reunited 
people. I am not so much happy as proud to participate 
in this capacity on such an occasion, — proud that I should 20 
represent such a people. Am I mistaken, ladies and 
gentlemen, in supposing that nothing of this sort could 
have occurred in anything but a democracy? The people 
of a democracy are not related to their rulers as subjects 
are related to a government. They are themselves the 25 
sovereign authority, and as they are neighbors of each 

77 



^8 Woodrow Wilson 

other, quickened by the same influences and moved by 
the same motives, they can understand each other. They 
are shot through with some of the deepest and profoundest 
instincts of human sympathy. They choose their govern- 

5 ments; they select their rulers; they live their own life, 
and they will not have that life disturbed and discolored 
by fraternal misunderstandings. I know that a reuniting 
of spirits like this can take place more quickly in our 
time than in any other because men are now imited by 

lo an easier transmission of those influences which make 
up the foundations of peace and of mutual understand- 
ing, but no process can work these effects unless there is a 
conducting medium. The conducting medium in this 
instance is the united heart of a great people. I am not 

15 going to detain you by trying to repeat any of the eloquent 
thoughts which have moved us this afternoon, for I re- 
joice in the simplicity of the task which is assigned to me. 
My privilege is this, ladies and gentlemen: To declare 
this chapter in the history of the United States closed 

20 and ended, and I bid you turn wdth me with your faces 
to the future, quickened by the memories of the past, 
but with nothing to do with the contests of the past, 
knowing, as we have shed our blood upon opposite sides, 
we now face and admire one another. I do not know how 

25 many years ago it was that the Century Dictionary was 
published, but I remember one day in the Century Cyclo- 
pedia of Names I had occasion to turn to the name of 
Robert E. Lee, and I found him there in that book pub- 
lished in New York City simply described as a great 

30 American general. The generosity of our judgments did 
not begin to-day. The generosity of our judgment was 
made up soon after this great struggle was over. Men 
came and sat together again in the Congress and united 
in all the efforts of peace and of government, and our 



Closing a Chapter 79 

solemn duty is to see that each one of us is in his own 
consciousness and in his own conduct a replica of this 
great reunited people. It is our duty and our privilege 
to be like the country we represent and, speaking no word 
of malice, no word of criticism even, stand shoulder to 
shoulder to lift the burdens of mankind in the future and 
show the paths of freedom to all the world. 



ANNAPOLIS COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 

[Delivered before the Graduating Class of the United States Naval 
Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, June 5, 1914.] 

Mr. Superintendent, Young Gentlemen, Ladies and 
Gentlemen : 

During the greater part of my life I have been associated 
with young men, and on occasions it seems to me without 

5 number have faced bodies of youngsters going out to take 
part in the activities of the world, but I have a conscious- 
ness of a different significance in this occasion from that 
which I have felt on other similar occasions. When I 
have faced the graduating classes at universities I have 

10 felt that I was facing a great conjecture. They were 
going out into all sorts of pursuits and with every degree 
of preparation for the particular thing they were expecting 
to do; some without any preparation at all, for they did 
not know w^hat they expected to do. But in facing you 

15 I am facing men who are trained for a special thing. You 
know what you are going to do, and you are under the 
eye of the whole Nation in doing it. For you, gentlemen, 
are to be part of the power of the Government of the 
United States. There is a very deep and solemn signifi- 

20 cance in that fact, and I am sure that every one of you 
feels it. The moral is perfectly obvious. Be ready and 
fit for anything that you have to do. And keep ready 
and fit. Do not grow slack. Do not suppose that your 
education is over because you have received your diplomas 

25 from the academy. Your education has just begun. 
Moreover, you are to have a very peculiar privilege which 
not many of your predecessors have had. You are your- 

80 



Annapolis Commencement 8i 

selves going to become teachers. You are going to teach 
those 50,000 fellow-countrymen of yours who are the en- 
listed men of the Navy. You are going to make them 
fitter to obey your orders and to serve the country. You 
are going to make them fitter to see what the orders mean 5 
in their outlook upon life and upon the service; and that 
is a great privilege, for out of you is going the energy and 
intelligence which are going to quicken the whole body of 
the United States Navy. 

I congratulate you upon that prospect, but I want to 10 
ask you not to get the professional point of view. I would 
ask it of you if you were lawyers; I would ask it of you if 
you were merchants; I would ask it of you whatever you 
expected to be. Do not get the professional point of view. 
There is nothing narrower or more unserviceable than 15 
the professional point of view, to have the attitude toward 
life that it centers in your profession. It does not. Your 
profession is only one of the many activities which are 
meant to keep the world straight, and to keep the energy 
in its blood and in its muscle. We are all of us in this 20 
world, as I understand it, to set forward the affairs of the 
whole world, though we play a special part in that great 
function. The Navy goes all over the world, and I think 
it is to be congratulated upon having that sort of illustra- 
tion of what the world is and what it contains; and inas- 25 
much as you are going all over the world you ought to 
be the better able to see the relation that your country 
bears to the rest of the world. 

It ought to be one of your thoughts all the time that 
you are sample Americans — not merely sample Navy 30 
men, not merely sample soldiers, but sample Americans — ■ 
and that you have the point of view of America with 
regard to her Navy and her Army; that she is using them 
as the instruments of civilization, not as the instruments 



82 Woodrow Wilson 

of aggression. The idea of America is to serve humanity, 
and every time you let the Stars and Stripes free to the 
wind you ought to realize that that is in itself a message 
that you are on an errand which other navies have some- 

5 times forgotten; not an errand of conquest, but an errand 
of service. I always have the same thought when I look 
at the flag of the United States, for I know something of 
the history of the struggle of mankind for liberty. When 
I look at that flag it seems to me as if the white stripes 

lo were strips of parchment upon which are written the 
rights of man, and the red stripes the streams of blood 
by which those rights have been made good. Then in the 
little blue firmament in the corner have swung out the 
stars of the States of the American Union. So it is, as it 

15 were, a sort of floating charter that has come dow^n to us 
from Runnymede, when men said, "We will not have mas- 
ters; we will be a people, and we will seek our own liberty." 
You are not serving a government, gentlemen; you 
are serving a people. For we who for the time being 

20 constitute the Government are merely instruments for 
a little while in the hands of a great Nation which chooses 
whom it will to carry out its decrees and who invariably 
rejects the man who forgets the ideals w^hich it intended 
him to serve. So that I hope that wherever you go you 

25 W'ill have a generous, comprehending love of the people 
you come into contact with, and will come back and tell 
us, if you can, what service the United States can render 
to the remotest parts of the world; tell us where you see 
men suffering; tell us where you think advice will lift 

30 them lip; tell us w^here you think that the counsel of states- 
men may better the fortunes of unfortunate men; always 
having it in mind that you are champions of what is right 
and fair all 'round for the public welfare, no matter w^here 
you are, and that it is that you are ready to fight for and 



Annapolis Commencement 83 

not merely on the drop of a hat or upon some slight punctil- 
ho but that you are champions of your fellow-men, par- 
ticularly of that great body one hundred imlhon strong 
whom you represent in the United States. _ . ^, ^ 

What do you think is the most lasting impression that 5 
those boys down at Vera Cruz are going to leave? They 
have had to use some force-I pray God it may not be 
necessary for them to use any more-but do you think 
that the way they fought is going to be the most lasting 
impression? Have men not fought ever since the world 10 
began? Is there anything new in using force? The new 
things in the world are the things that are divorced from 
force The things that show the moral compulsions of 
the human conscience, those are the things by which ^^•e 
have been building up civilization, not by force. And 15 
the lasting impression that those boys are gomg to leave 
is this, that they exercise self-control; that they are ready 
and diligent to make the place where they went fitter to 
live in than they found it; that they regarded other people s 
rights; that they did not strut and bluster but went .0 
quietly, like self-respecting gentlemen, about their legiti- 
mate work. And the people of Vera Cruz, who feared 
the Americans and despised the Americans, are gomg to 
get a very different taste in their mouths about the whole 
fhing when the boys of the Navy^and the Army come .5 
away. Is that not something to be proud of, that you 
know how to use force like men of conscience and like 
gentlemen, serving your fellow-men and not W ^ 
overcome them? Like that gallant gentleman who has 
so long borne the heats and perplexities and distresses 30 
of the situation in Vera Cruz-Admiral Fletcher. I 
mention him, because his service there has been longer 
and so much of the early perplexities fell upon hum I 
have been in almost daily communication with Admiral 



84 Woodrow Wilson 

Fletcher, and I have tested his temper. I have tested his 
discretion. I know that he is a man with a touch of states- 
manship about him, and he has grown bigger in my eye each 
day as I have read his dispatches, for he has sought ahvays 

5 to serve the thing he was trying to do in the temper that 
we all recognize and love to believe is typically American. 
I challenge you youngsters to go out with these con- 
ceptions, knowing that you are part of the Government 
and force of the United States and that men will judge 

10 us by you. I am not afraid of the verdict. I cannot 
look in your faces and doubt w^hat it will be, but I w^ant 
you to take these great engines of force out onto the seas 
like adventurers enlisted for the elevation of the spirit 
of the human race. For that is the only distinction that 

15 America has. Other nations have been strong, other 
nations have piled wealth as high as the sky, but they 
have come into disgrace because they used their force 
and their wealth for the oppression of mankind and their 
own aggrandizement; and America will not bring glory 

20 to herself, but disgrace, by following the beaten paths of 
history. We must strike out upon new paths, and we 
must count upon you gentlemen to be the explorers who 
will carry this spirit and spread this message all over the 
seas and in every port of the civilized world. 

25 You see, therefore, why I said that w^hen I faced you 
I felt there was a special significance. I am not present 
on an occasion when you are about to scatter on various 
errands. You are all going on the same errand, and I 
like to feel bound with you in one common organization 

30 for the glory of America. And her glory goes deeper 
than all the tinsel, goes deeper than the sound of guns 
and the clash of sabers; it goes down to the very founda- 
tions of those things that have made the spirit of men 
free and happy and content. 



THE MEANING OF LIBERTY 

[Address at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, July 4, iQH-l 

Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Cittzens : 

We are assembled to celebrate the one hundred and 
thirty-eighth anniversary of the birth of the United States. 
I suppose that we can more vividly realize the circum- 
stances of that birth standing on this historic spot than 5 
it would be possible to realize them anywhere else Ihe 
Declaration of Independence was written m Philadelphia; 
it was adopted in this historic building by which we stand. 
I have just had the privilege of sitting in the chair of the 
great man who presided over the deliberations of those 10 
who gave the declaration to the world. My hand rests at 
this moment upon the table upon which the declaration 
was signed. We can feel that we are almost m the visible 
and tangible presence of a great historic transaction. 

Have you ever read the Declaration of Independence 15 
or attended with close comprehension to the real character 
of it when you have heard it read? If you have, you will 
know that it is not a Fourth of July oration. The Declara- 
tion of Independence was a document prehmmary to war 
It was a vital piece of practical business, not a piece ot 20 
rhetoric; and if you will pass beyond those preliminary 
passages which we are accustomed to quote about the 
rights of men and read into the heart of the documen 
you will see that it is very express and detailed, that it 
consists of a series of definite specifications concerning 25 
actual public business of the day. Not the business of 
our day, for the matter with which it deals is past, but the 
business of that first revolution by which the Nation was 

8S 



86 Wood row Wilson 

set up, the business of 1776. Its general statements, its 
general declarations cannot mean anything to us unless 
we append to it a similar specific body of particulars as 
to what we consider the essential business of our own day. 
5 Liberty does not consist, my fellow-citizens, in mere 
general declarations of the rights of man. It consists in 
the translation of those declarations into definite action. 
Therefore, standing here where the declaration was 
adopted, reading its businesslike sentences, we ought to 
10 ask ourselves what there is in it for us. There is nothing 
in it for us unless we can translate it into the terms of 
our own conditions and of our own lives. We must reduce 
it to what the lawyers call a bill of particulars. It con- 
tains a bill of particulars, but the bill of particulars of 
15 1776. If we would keep it alive, we must fill it with a bill 
of particulars of the year 19 14. 

The task to which we have constantly to readdress 
ourselves is the task of proving that we are worthy of the 
men who drew this great declaration and know what they 
20 would have done in our circumstances. Patriotism con- 
sists in some very practical things — practical in that they 
belong to the life of every day, that they wear no extraor- 
dinary distinction about them, that they are connected 
with commonplace duty. The way to be patriotic in 
25 America is not only to love America but to love the duty 
that Hes nearest to our hand and know that in performing 
it we are serving our country. There are some gentlemen 
in Washington, for example, at this very moment who are 
showing themselves very patriotic in a way which does 
30 not attract wide attention but seems to belong to mere 
everyday obligations. The Members of the House and 
Senate who stay in hot Washington to m.aintain a quorum 
of the Houses and transact the all-important business of 
the Nation are doing an act of patriotism. I honor them 



The Meaning of Liberty 87 

for it, and I am glad to stay there and stick by them until 
the work is done. 

It is patriotic, also, to learn what the facts of our na- 
tional life are and to face them with candor. I have heard 
a great many facts stated about the present business condi- 5 
tion of this country, for example— a great many allega- 
tions of fact, at any rate, but the allegations do not tally 
with one another. And yet I know that truth always 
matches with truth; and when I find some insisting that 
everything is going wrong and others insisting that every- 10 
thing is going right, and when I know from a wide observa- 
tion of the general circumstances of the country taken as 
a whole that things are going extremely well, I wonder 
what those who are crying out that things are wrong are 
trying to do. Are they trying to serve the country, or 15 
are they trying to serve something smaller than the coun- 
try? Are they trying to put hope into the hearts of the 
men who work and toil every day, or are they trying to 
plant discouragement and despair in those hearts? And 
why do they cry that everything is wrong and yet do 20 
nothing to set it right? If they love America and any- 
thing is wrong amongst us, it is their business to put their 
hand with ours to the task of setting it right. When the 
facts are known and acknowledged, the duty of all pa- 
triotic men is to accept them in candor and to address 25 
themselves hopefully and confidently to the common 
counsel which is necessary to act upon them wisely and 
in universal concert. 

I have had some experiences in the last fourteen months 
which have not been entirely reassuring. It was uni- 30 
versally admitted, for example, my fellow-citizens, that 
the banking system of this country needed reorganiza- 
tion. We set the best minds that we could find to the 
task of discovering the best method of reorganization. 



88 Woodrow Wilson 

But we met with hardly anything but criticism from the 
bankers of the country; we met with hardly anything but 
resistance from the majority of those at least who spoke 
at all concerning the matter. And yet so soon as that 
5 act was passed there was a universal chorus of applause, 
and the very men who had opposed the measure joined in 
that applause. If it was wrong the day before it was 
passed, why was it right the day after it was passed? Where 
had been the candor of criticism not only, but the concert 

lo of counsel which makes legislative action vigorous and 
safe and successful? 

It is not patriotic to concert measures against one an- 
other; it is patriotic to concert measures for one another. 
In one sense the Declaration of Independence has lost 

15 its significance. It has lost its significance as a declara- 
tion of national independence. Nobody outside of America 
believed when it was uttered that we could make good 
our independence; now nobody anywhere would dare to 
doubt that we are independent and can maintain our in- 

20 dependence. As a declaration of independence, therefore, 
it is a mere historic document. Our independence is a 
fact so stupendous that it can be measured only by the 
size and energy and variety and wealth and power of one 
of the greatest nations in the w^orld. But it is one thing to 

25 be independent and it is another thing to know what to 
do with your independence. It is one thing to come to 
your majority and another thing to know what you are 
going to do with your life and your energies; and one of 
the most serious questions for sober-minded men to ad- 

30 dress themselves to in the United States is this: What are 
we going to do with the influence and power of this great 
Nation? Are we going to play the old role of using that 
power for our aggrandizement and material benefit only? 
You know what that may mean. It may upon occasion 



The Meaning of Liberty 89 

mean that we shall use it to make the peoples of other 
nations suffer in the way in which we said it was intoler- 
able to suffer when we uttered our Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. 

The Department of State at Washington is constantly 5 
called upon to back up the commercial enterprises and the 
industrial enterprises of the United States in foreign 
countries, and it at one time went so far in that direction 
that all its diplomacy came to be designated as ''dollar 
diplomacy." It was called upon to support every man 10 
who wanted to earn anything anywhere if he was an 
American. But there ought to be a limit to that. There 
is no man who is more interested than I am in carrying the 
enterprise of American business men to every quarter of 
the globe. I was interested in it long before I was sus- 15 
pected of being a pohtician. I have been preaching it 
year after year as the great thing that lay in the future 
for the United States, to show her wit and skill and enter- 
prise and influence in every country in the world. But 
observe the limit to all that which is laid upon us perhaps 20 
more than upon any other nation in the world. _ We set 
this Nation up, at any rate we professed to set it up to 
vindicate the rights of men. We did not name any dit- 
ferences between one race and another. We did not set 
up any barriers against any particular people. We opened 25 
our gates to all the world and said, "Let all men who wish 
to be free come to us and they will be welcome." We said, 
"This independence of ours is not a selfish thing for our 
own exclusive private use. It is for everybody to whom 
we can find the means of extending it." We cannot with 30 
that oath taken in our youth, we cannot with that great 
ideal set before us when we were a young people and num- 
bered only a scant 3,000,000, take upon ourselves, now 
that we are 100,000,000 strong, any other conception of 



90 Woodrow Wilson 

duty than we then entertained. If American enterprise 
in foreign countries, particularly in those foreign countries 
which are not strong enough to resist us, takes the shape 
of imposing upon and exploiting the mass of the people 

5 of that country it ought to be checked and not encouraged. 
I am wilHng to get anything for an American that money 
and enterprise can obtain except the suppression of the 
rights of other men. I will not help any man buy a power 
which he ought not to exercise over his fellow-beings. 

lo You know, my fellow-countrymen, what a big question 
there is in Mexico. Eighty-five per cent of the Mexican 
people have never been allowed to have any genuine par- 
ticipation in their own Government or to exercise any 
substantial rights with regard to the very land they live 

15 upon. All the rights that men most desire have been exer- 
cised by the other fifteen per cent. Do you suppose that 
that circumstance is not sometimes in my thought? I 
know that the American people have a heart that will 
beat just as strong for those millions in Mexico as it will 

20 beat, or has beaten, for any other miUions elsewhere in 
the world, and that when once they conceive what is at 
stake in Mexico they will know what ought to be done in 
Mexico. I hear a great deal said about the loss of prop- 
erty in Mexico and the loss of the lives of foreigners, and 

25 I deplore these things with all my heart. Undoubtedly, 
upon the conclusion of the present disturbed conditions in 
Mexico those who have been unjustly deprived of their 
property or in any wise unjustly put upon ought to be 
compensated. Men's individual rights have no doubt 

30 been invaded, and the invasion of those rights has been 
attended by many deplorable circumstances which ought 
sometime, in the proper w^y, to be accounted for. But 
back of it all is the struggle of a people to come into its 
own, and while we look upon the incidents in the fore- 



The Meaning of Liberty 91 

ground let us not forget the great tragic reahty in the 
background which towers above the whole picture. 

A patriotic American is a man who is not niggardly and 
selfish in the things that he enjoys that make for human 
liberty and the rights of man. He wants to share them 5 
with the whole world, and he is never so proud of the great 
flag under which he lives as when it comes to mean to 
other people as well as to himself a symbol of hope and 
liberty. I would be ashamed of this flag if it ever did any- 
thing outside America that we would not permit it to do 10 
inside of America. 

The world is becoming more complicated every day, 
my fellow-citizens. No man ought to be foolish enough to 
think that he understands it all. And, therefore, I am glad 
that there are some simple things in the world. One of the 15 
simple things is principle. Honesty is a perfectly simple 
thing. It is hard for me to believe that in most circum- 
stances when a man has a choice of ways he does not know^ 
which is the right way and which is the wTong way. No 
man who has chosen the \\Tong way ought even to come 20 
into Independence Square; it is holy ground which he 
ought not to tread upon. He ought not to come w^here 
immortal voices have uttered the great sentences of such a 
document as this Declaration of Independence upon which 
rests the liberty of a whole nation. 25 

And so I say that it is patriotic sometimes to prefer the 
honor of the country to its material interest. Would you 
rather be deemed by all the nations of the world incapable 
of keeping your treaty obligations in order that you might 
have free tolls for American ships? The treaty under 30 
which we gave up that right may have been a mistaken 
treaty, but there was no mistake about its meaning. 

When I have made a promise as a man I try to keep it, 
and I know of no other rule permissible to a nation. The 



92 Woodrow Wilson 

most distinguished nation in the world is the nation 
that can and will keep its promises even to its own hurt. 
And I want to say parenthetically that I do not think 
anybody was hurt. I cannot be enthusiastic for subsidies 
5 to a monopoly, but let those who are enthusiastic for 
subsidies ask themselves whether they prefer subsidies to 
unsullied honor. 

The most patriotic man, ladies and gentlemen, is some- 
times the man who goes in the direction that he thinks 

lo right even when he sees half the world against him. It is 
the dictate of patriotism to sacrifice yourself if you think 
that that is the path of honor and of duty. Do not blame 
others if they do not agree with you. Do not die with 
bitterness in your heart because you did not convince the 

15 rest of the world, but die happy because you believe that 
you tried to serve your country by not selling your soul. 
Those were grim days, the days of 1776. Those gentlemen 
did not attach their names to the Declaration of Independ- 
ence on this table expecting a holiday on the next day, and 

20 that 4th of July was not itself a holiday. They attached 
their signatures to that significant document knowing that 
if they failed it was certain that every one of them would 
hang for the failure. They were committing treason in the 
interest of the liberty of 3,000,000 people in America. All 

25 the rest of the world was against them and smiled with 
cynical incredulity at the audacious undertaking. Do you 
think that if they could see this great Nation now they 
would regret anything that they then did to draw the gaze 
of a hostile world upon them? Every idea must be started 

30 by somebody, and it is a lonely thing to start anything. 

Yet if it is in you, you must start it if you have a man's 

blood in you and if you love the country that you profess 

to be working for. 

I am sometimes very much interested when I see gentle- 



The Meaning of Liberty 93 

men supposing that popularity is the way to success in 
America. The way to success in this great country, with 
its fair judgments, is to show that you are not afraid of 
anybody except God and his final verdict. If I did not be- 
lieve that, I would not believe in democracy. If I did not 5 
believe that, I would not believe that people can govern 
themselves. If I did not believe that the moral judgment 
would be the last judgment, the final judgment, in the 
minds of men as well as the tribunal of God, I could not 
believe in popular government. But I do believe these 10 
things, and, therefore, I earnestly believe in the democracy 
not only of America but of every awakened people that 
wishes and intends to govern and control its own affairs. 

It is very inspiring, my friends, to come to this that may 
be called the original fountain of independence and liberty 15 
in American and here drink draughts of patriotic feeling 
which seem to renew the very blood in one's veins. Down 
in Washington sometimes when the days are hot and the 
business presses intolerably and there are so many things 
to do that it does not seem possible to do anything in the 20 
way it ought to be done, it is always possible to lift one's 
thought above the task of the moment and, as it were, to 
realize that great thing of which we are all parts, the great 
body of American feeling and American principle. No 
man could do the work that has to be done in Washington 25 
if he allowed himself to be separated from that body of 
principle. He must make himself feel that he is a part of 
the people of the United States, that he is trying to think 
not only for them, but with them, and then he cannot 
feel lonely. He not only cannot feel lonely but he cannot 30 
feel afraid of anything. 

My dream is that as the years go on and the world 
knows more and more of America it will also drink at these 
fountains of youth and renewal; that it also will turn to 



94 Wood row Wilson 

America for those moral inspirations which lie at the basis 
of all freedom; that the world will never fear America 
unless it feels that it is engaged in some enterprise which is 
inconsistent with the rights of humanity ; and that America 
5 will come into the full light of the day when all shall know 
that she puts human rights above all other rights and that 
her flag is the flag not only of America but of humanity. 
What other great people has devoted itself to this 
exalted ideal? To what other nation in the world can all 

10 eyes look for an instant sympathy that thrills the whole 
body politic when men anywhere are fighting for their 
rights? I do not know that there will ever be a declaration 
of independence and of grievances for mankind, but I be- 
lieve that if any such document is ever drawn it will be 

15 drawn in the spirit of the American Declaration of In- 
dependence, and that America has lifted high the light 
w^hich will shine unto all generations and guide the feet of 
mankind to the goal of justice and liberty and peace. 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

[An appeal to the citizens of the Republic, requesting their as- 
sistance in maintaining a state of neutrality during the European 
War, August 20, 19 14.] 

My Fellow- Countrymen: 

I suppose that every thoughtful man in America has 
asked himself, during these last troubled weeks, what in- 
fluence the European war may exert upon the United 
States, and I take the liberty of addressing a few words to 5 
you in order to point out that it is entirely within our 
own choice what its effects upon us will be and to urge 
very earnestly upon you the sort of speech and conduct 
which will best safeguard the Nation against distress and 
disaster. 10 

The effect of the war upon the United States will depend 
upon what American citizens say and do. Every man who 
really loves America will act and speak in the true spirit of 
neutrality, which is the spirit of impartiality and fairness 
and friendliness to all concerned. The spirit of the Nation 15 
in this critical matter will be determined largely by what 
individuals and society and those gathered in public 
meetings do and say, upon what newspapers and magazines 
contain, upon what ministers utter in their pulpits, and 
men proclaim as their opinions on the street. 20 

The people of the United States are drawn from many 
nations, and chiefly from the nations now at war. It is 
natural and inevitable that there should be the utmost 
variety of sympathy and desire among them with regard 
to the issues and circumstances of the conflict. Some will 25 
wish one nation, others another, to succeed in the mo- 

95 



96 Wood row Wilson 

mentous struggle. It will be easy to excite passion and 
difficult to allay it. Those responsible for exciting it will 
assume a heavy responsibility, responsibility for no less a 
thing than that the people of the United States, whose love 

5 of their country and whose loyalty to its Government 
should unite them as Americans all, bound in honor and 
affection to think first of her and her interests, may be 
divided in camps of hostile opinion, hot against each 
other, involved in the war itself in impulse and opinion if 

10 not in action. 

Such divisions among us would be fatal to our peace of 
mind and might seriously stand in the way of the proper 
performance of our duty as the one great nation at peace, 
the one people holding itself ready to play a part of im- 

15 partial mediation and speak the counsels of peace and 
acconmiodation, not as a partisan, but as a friend. 

I venture, therefore, my fellow countrymen, to speak a 
solemn word of warning to you against that deepest, most 
subtle, most essential breach of neutrality which may 

20 spring out of partisanship, out of passionately taking sides. 
The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in 
name during these days that are to try men's souls. We 
must be impartial in thought as well as in action, must put 
a curb upon our sentiments as well as upon every transac- 

25 tion that might be construed as a preference of one party 
to the struggle before another. 

My thought is of America. I am speaking, I feel sure, 
the earnest wish and purpose of every thoughtful American 
that this great country of ours, which is, of course, the 

30 first in our thoughts and in our hearts, should show herself 
in this time of peculiar trial a Nation fit beyond others to 
exhibit the fine poise of undisturbed judgment, the dignity 
of self-control, the efficiency of dispassionate action; a 
Nation that neither sits in judgment upon others nor is 



American Neutrality 97 

disturbed in her own counsels and which keeps herself fit 
and free to do what is honest and disinterested and truly 
serviceable for the peace of the world. 

Shall we not resolve to put upon ourselves the restraints 
which will bring to our people the happiness and the great 
and lasting influence for peace we covet for them? 



APPEAL FOR ADDITIONAL REVENUE 

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, 
September 4, 1914-] 

Gentlemen of the Congress: 

I come to you to-day to discharge a duty which I wish 
with all my heart I might have been spared; but it is a 
very clear duty, and therefore I perform it without hesita- 

5 tion or apology. I come to ask very earnestly that addi- 
tional revenue be provided for the Government. 

During the month of August there was, as compared 
with the corresponding month of last year, a falling off of 
$10,629,538 in the revenues collected from customs. A 

10 continuation of this decrease in the same proportion 
throughout the current fiscal year would probably mean 
a loss of customs revenues of from sixty to one hundred 
millions. I need not tell you to what this falling off is 
due. It is due, in chief part, not to the reductions recently 

15 made in the customs duties, but to the great decrease in 
importations; and that is due to the extraordinary extent 
of the industrial area affected by the present war in Europe. 
Conditions have arisen which no man foresaw; they affect 
the whole world of commerce and economic production; 

20 and they must be faced and dealt with. 

It would be very unwise to postpone dealing with them. 
Delay in such a matter and in the particular circumstances 
in which we now find ourselves as a nation might involve 
consequences of the most embarrassing and deplorable 

25 sort, for which I, for one, would not care to be responsible. 
It would be very dangerous in the present circumstances 
to create a moment's doubt as to the strength and suffi- 
ciency of the Treasury of the United States, its abihty 

98 



Appeal for Additional Revenue 99 

to assist, to steady, and sustain the financial operations 
of the country's business. If the Treasury is known, or 
even thought, to be Weak, where will be our peace of mind? 
The whole industrial activity of the country would be 
chilled and demoralized. Just now the peculiarly difficult 5 
financial problems of the moment are being successfully 
dealt with, with great self-possession and good sense and 
very sound judgment; but they are only in process of being 
worked out. If the process of solution is to be completed, 
no one must be given reason to doubt the solidity and 10 
adequacy of the Treasury of the Government which stands 
behind the whole method by which our difficulties are 
being met and handled. 

The Treasury itself could get along for a considerable 
period, no doubt, without immediate resort to new sources 15 
of taxation. But at what cost to the business of the com- 
munity? Approximately $75,000,000, a large part of 
the present Treasury balance, is now on deposit with 
national banks distributed throughout the country. It 
is deposited, of course, on call. I need not point out to 20 
you what the probable consequences of inconvenience 
and distress and confusion would be if the diminishing 
income of the Treasury should make it necessary rapidly 
to withdraw these deposits. And yet without additional 
revenue that plainly might become necessary, and the 25 
time when it became necessary could not be controlled 
or determined by the convenience of the business of the 
country. It would have to be determined by the opera- 
tions and necessities of the Treasury itself. Such risks 
are not necessary and ought not to be run. We cannot 30 
too scrupulously or carefully safeguard a financial situa- 
tion which is at best, while war continues in Europe, 
difficult and abnormal. Hesitation and delay are the 
worst forms of bad policy under such conditions. 



lOO Woodrow Wilson 

And we ought not to borrow. We ought to resort to 
taxation, however we may regret the necessity of putting 
additional temporary burdens on our people. To sell 
bonds would be to make a most untimely and unjustifiable 
5 demand on the money market; untimely, because this is 
manifestly not the time to withdraw working capital 
from other uses to pay the Government's bills; unjustifi- 
able, because unnecessary. The country is able to pay 
any just and reasonable taxes without distress. And to 

lo every other form of borrowing, whether for long periods 
or for short, there is the same objection. These are not 
the circumstances, this is at this particular moment and 
in this particular exigency not the market, to borrow 
large sums of money. What we are seeking is to ease and 

15 assist every financial transaction, not to add a single 
additional embarrassment to the situation. The people 
of this country are both intelligent and profoundly pa- 
triotic. They are ready to meet the present conditions 
in the right way and to support the Government with 

20 generous self-denial. They know and understand, and 
will be intolerant only of those who dodge responsibility 
or are not frank with them. 

The occasion is not of our own making. We had no 
part in making it. But it is here. It affects us as directly 

25 and palpably almost as if we were participants in the 
circumstances which gave rise to it. We must accept 
the inevitable with calm judgment and unruffled spirits, 
like men accustomed to deal with the unexpected, habit- 
uated to take care of themselves, masters of their own 

30 affairs and their own fortunes. We shall pay the bill, 
though we did not deliberately incur it. 

In order to meet every demand upon the Treasury 
without delay or peradveriture and in order to keep the 
Treasury strong, unquestionably strong, and strong 



Appeal for Additional Revenue loi 

throughout the present anxieties, I respectfully urge that 
an additional revenue of $100,000,000 be raised through 
internal taxes devised in your wisdom to meet the emer- 
gency. The only suggestion I take the liberty of making 
is that such sources of revenue be chosen as will begin to 5 
yield at once and yield with a certain and constant flow. 

I cannot close without expressing the confidence with 
which I approach a Congress, with regard to this or any 
other matter, which has shown so untiring a devotion to 
public duty, which has responded to the needs of the 10 
Nation throughout a long season despite inevitable fatigue 
and personal sacrifice, and so large a proportion of whose 
Members have devoted their whole time and energy to 
the business of the country. 



THE OPINION OF THE WORLD 

[Address before the American Bar Association, in Continental 
Hall, October 20, 1914-] 

Mr. President, Gentlemen of the American Bar 
Association : 
I am very deeply gratified by the greeting that your 
president has given me and by your response to it. My 

5 only strength lies in your confidence. 

We stand now in a peculiar case. Our first thought, I 
suppose, as lawyers, is of international law, of those bonds 
of right and principle which draw the nations together 
and hold the community of the world to some standards 

10 of action. We know that we see in international law, as 
it were, the moral processes by which law itself came into 
existence. I know that as a lawyer I have myself at times 
felt that there was no real comparison between the law of 
a nation and the law of nations, because the latter lacked 

15 the sanction that gave the former strength and validity. 
And yet, if you look into the matter more closely, you will 
find that the two have the same foundations, and that 
those foundations are more evident and conspicuous in 
our day than they have ever been before. 

20 The opinion of the world is the mistress of the world; 
and the processes of international law are the slow proc- 
esses by which opinion works its will. What impresses 
me is the constant thought that that is the tribunal at the 
bar of which we all sit. I would call your attention, in- 

25 cidentally, to the circumstance that it does not observe 
the ordinary rules of evidence; which has sometimes sug- 
gested to me that the ordinary rules of evidence had 

lOZ 



The Opinion of the World 103 

shown some signs of growing antique. Everything, rumor 
included, is heard in this court, and the standard of judg- 
ment is not so much the character of the testimony as the 
character of the witness. The motives are disclosed, the 
purposes are conjectured, and that opinion is finally ac- 5 
cepted which seems to be, not the best founded in law, 
perhaps, but the best founded in integrity of character 
and of morals. That is the process which is slow^ly w^ork- 
ing its will upon the world; and what we should be watch- 
ful of is not so much jealous interests as sound principles 10 
of action. The disinterested course is always the biggest 
course to pursue not only, but it is in the long run the 
most profitable course to pursue. If you can establish 
your character, you can establish your credit. 

What I wanted to suggest to this association, in bidding 15 
them very hearty welcome to the city, is whether we suf- 
ficiently apply these same ideas to the body of municipal 
law which we seek to administer. Citations seem to play 
so much larger a role now than principle. There was a 
time when the thoughtful eye of the judge rested upon 20 
the changes of social circumstances and almost palpably 
saw the law arise out of human life. Have we got to a 
time when the only way to change law is by statute? The 
changing of law by statute seems to me like mending a 
garment with a patch, whereas law should grow^ by the life 25 
that is in it, not by the life that is outside of it. 

I once said to a la^\yer with whom I was discussing 
some question of precedent, and in whose presence I was 
venturing to doubt the rational validity, at any rate, of 
the particular precedents he cited, "After all, isn't our 30 
object justice?" And he said, ''God forbid! We should 
be very much confused if we made that our standard. 
Our standard is to find out what the rule has been and 
how the rule that has been applies to the case that is." I 



I04 Woodrow Wilson 

should hate to think that the law was based entirely upon 
''has beens." I should hate to think that the law did not 
derive its impulse from looking forward rather than from 
looking backward, or, rather, that it did not derive its in- 

5 struction from looking about and seeing what the circum- 
stances of man actually are and what the impulses of 
justice necessarily are. 

Understand me, gentlemen, I am not venturing in this 
presence to impeach the law. For the present, by the 

lo force of circumstances, I am in part the embodiment of 
the law, and it would be very awkward to disavow myself. 
But I do wish to make this intimation, that in this time 
of world change, in this time when we are going to find 
out just how, in what particulars, and to what extent the 

15 real facts of human life and the real moral judgments of 
mankind prevail, it is worth while looking inside our mu- 
nicipal law and seeing whether the judgments of the law 
are made square with the moral judgments of mankind. 
For I believe that we are custodians, not of commands, 

20 but of a spirit. We are custodians of the spirit of righteous- 
ness, of the spirit of equal-handed justice, of the spirit of 
hope which believes in the perfectibility of the law with 
the perfectibility of human life itself. 
Public life, like private life, would be very dull and 

25 dry if it were not for this belief in the essential beauty of 
the human spirit and the belief that the human spirit 
could be translated into action and into ordinance. Not 
entire. You cannot go any faster than you can advance 
the average moral judgments of the mass, but you can 

30 go at least as fast as that, and you can see to it that you 
do not lag behind the average moral judgments of the 
mass. I have in my life dealt with all sorts and conditions 
of men, and I have found that the flame of moral judg- 
ment burned just as bright in the man of humble life and 



The Opinion of the World 105 

limited experience as in the scholar and the man of af- 
fairs. And I would like his voice always to be heard, not 
as a witness, not as speaking in his own case, but as if he 
were the voice of men in general, in our courts of justice, 
as well as the voice of the lawyers, remembering what the 5 
law has been. My hope is that, being stirred to the depths 
by the extraordinary circumstances of the time in which 
we live, w^e may recover from those depths something 
of a renewal of that vision of the law with which men may 
be supposed to have started out in the old days of the 10 
oracles, who communed with the intimations of divinity. 



THE POWER OF CHRISTIAN YOUNG MEN 

[Address at the Young Men's Christian Association's Celebration, 
Pittsburgh, October 24, 1914.] 

Mr. President, Mr. Porter, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I feel almost as if I were a truant, being away from 
Washington to-day, but I thought that perhaps if I were 
absent the Congress would have the more leisure to ad- 

5 journ. I do not ordinarily open my office at Washington 
on Saturday. Being a schoolmaster, I am accustomed to a 
Saturday holiday, and I thought I could not better spend 
a holiday than by showing at least something of the true 
direction of my affections; for by long association with 

10 the men who have worked for this organization I can say 
that it has enlisted my deep affection. 

I am interested in it for various reasons. First of all, be- 
cause it is an association of young men. I have had a 
good deal to do with young men in my time, and I have 

15 formed an impression of them which I believe to be con- 
trary to the general impression. They are generally 
thought to be arch radicals. As a matter of fact, they are 
the most conservative people I have ever dealt with. Go 
to a college community and try to change the least custom 

20 of that little world and find how the conservatives will rush 
at you. Moreover, young men are embarrassed by having 
inherited their fathers' opinions. I have often said that 
the use of a university is to make young gentlemen as un- 
like their fathers as possible. I do not say that with the 

25 least disrespect for the fathers; but every man who is old 
enough to have a son in college is old enough to have be- 
come very seriously immersed in some particular business 

106 



The Power of Christian Young Men 107 

and is almost certain to have caught the point of view of 
that particular business. And it is very useful to his son 
to be taken out of that narrow circle, conducted to some 
high place where he may see the general map of the world 
and of the interests of mankind, and there shown how big 5 
the world is and how much of it his father may happen to 
have forgotten. It would be worth while for men, middle- 
aged and old, to detach themselves more frequently from 
the things that command their daily attention and to 
think of the sweeping tides of humanity. 10 

Therefore I am interested in this association, because 
it is intended to bring 3'oung men together before any 
crust has formed over them, before they have been hard- 
ened to any particular occupation, before they have caught 
an inveterate point of view; while they still have a search- 15 
light that they can swing and see what it reveals of all the 
circumstances of the hidden world. 

I am the more interested in it because it is an associa- 
tion of young men who are Christians. I wonder if we 
attach sufficient importance to Christianity as a mere 20 
instrumentality in the life of mankind. For one, I am 
not fond of thinking of Christianity as the means of saving 
individual souls. I have always been very impatient of 
processes and institutions which said that their purpose 
was to put every man in the way of developing his char- 25 
acter. My advice is: Do not think about your character. 
If you will think about what you ought to do for other 
people, your character will take care of itself. Character 
is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its 
cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig. 30 
The only way your powers can become great is by exerting 
them outside the circle of your own narrow, special, selfish 
interests. And that is the reason of Christianity. Christ 
came into the world to save others, not to save himself; 



io8 Woodrow Wilson 

and no man is a true Christian who does not think con- 
stantly of how he can Hft his brother, how he can assist 
his friend, how he can enUghten mankind, how he can 
make virtue the rule of conduct in the circle in which he 
5 lives. An association merely of young men might be an 
association that had its energies put forth in every direc- 
tion, but an association of Christian young men is an 
association meant to put its shoulders under the world 
and lift it, so that other men may feel that they have 

lo companions in bearing the weight and heat of the day; 
that other men may know that there are those who care 
for them, who would go into places of difficulty and danger 
to rescue them, who regard themselves as their brother's 
keeper. 

15 And, then, I am glad that it is an association. Every 
word of its title means an element of strength. Young 
men are strong. Christian young men are the strongest 
kind of young men, and when they associate themselves 
together they have the incomparable strength of organiza- 

20 tion. The Young Men's Christian Association once ex- 
cited, perhaps it is not too much to say, the hostility of 
the organized churches of the Christian world, because 
the movement looked as if it were so non-sectarian, as if it 
were so outside the ecclesiastical field, that perhaps it 

25 was an effort to draw young men away from the churches 
and to substitute this organization for the great bodies of 
Christian people who joined themselves in the Christian 
denominations. But after a while it appeared that it was 
a great instrumentahty that belonged to all the churches; 

30 that it was a common instrument for sending the light 
of Christianity out into the world in its most practical 
form, drawing young men who were strangers into places 
where they could have companionship that stimulated 
them and suggestions that kept them straight and occupa- 



The Power of Christian Young Men 109 

tions that amused them without vicious practice; and 
then, by surrounding themselves with an atmosphere of 
purity and of simplicity of life, catch something of a 
glimpse of the great ideal which Christ lifted when He 
was elevated upon the cross. 5 

I remember hearing a very wise man say once, a man 
grown old in the service of a great church, that he had 
never taught his son religion dogmatically at any time; 
that he and the boy's mother had agreed that if the at- 
mosphere of that home did not make a Christian of the 10 
boy, nothing that they could say would make a Christian 
of him. They knew that Christianity was catching, and 
if they did not have it, it would not be communicated. 
If they did have it, it would penetrate while the boy 
slept, almost; while he was unconscious of the sweet in- 15 
fluences that were about him, while he reckoned nothing 
of instruction, but merely breathed into his lungs the 
wholesome air of a Christian home. That is the principle 
of the Young Men's Christian Association — to make a 
place where the atmosphere makes great ideals contagious. 20 
That is the reason that I said, though I had forgotten 
that I said it, what is quoted on the outer page of the pro- 
gram — that you can test a modern community by the 
degree of its interest in its Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation. You can test whether it knows what road it 25 
wants to travel or not. You can test whether it is deeply 
interested in the spiritual and essential prosperity of its 
rising generation. I know of no test that can be more 
conclusively put to a community than that. 

I want to suggest to the young men of this association 30 
that it is the duty of young men not only to combine for 
the things that are good, but to combine in a militant 
spirit. There is a fine passage in one of Milton's prose 
writings which I am sorry to say I cannot quote, but 



no Woodrow Wilson 

the meaning of which I can give you, and it is worth 
hearing.* He says that he has no patience with a cloistered 
virtue that does not go out and seek its adversary. Ah, 
how tired I am of the men who are merely on the defen- 
5 sive, who hedge themselves in, who perhaps enlarge the 
hedge enough to include their httle family circle and 
ward off all the evil influences of the world from that 
loved and hallowed group. How tired I am of the men 
whose virtue is selfish because it is merely self-protective! 

10 And how much I wish that men by the hundred thousand 
might volunteer to go out and seek an adversary and 
subdue him! 

I have had the fortune to take part in affairs of a con- 
siderable variety of sorts, and I have tried to hate as few 

15 persons as possible, but there is an exquisite combination 
of contempt and hate that I have for a particular kind of 
person, and that is the moral coward. I wish we could 
give all our cowards a perpetual vacation. Let them go 
off and sit on the side lines and see us play the game; and 

20 put them off the field if they interfere with the game. They 
do nothing but harm, and they do it by that most subtle 
and fatal thing of all, that of taking the momentum and 
the spirit and the forward dash out of things. A man 
who is virtuous and a coward has no marketable virtue 

25 about him. The virtue, I repeat, which is merely self- 
defensive is not serviceable even, I suspect, to himself. 
For how a man can swallow and not taste bad when 
he is a coward and thinking only of himself I cannot 
imagine. 

30 Be miUtant! Be an organization that is going to do 

* In the Areopagitica: "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered 
virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees 
her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garlan(^ 
is to be run for, not without dust and heat." 



The' Power of Christian Young Men ill 

things! If you can find older men who will give you 
countenance and acceptable leadership, follow them; but 
if you cannot, organize separately and dispense with 
them. There are only two sorts of men worth associating 
with when something is to be done. Those are young 5 
men and men who never grow old. Now, if you find men 
who have grown old, about whom the crust has hardened, 
whose hinges are stiff, whose minds always have their 
eye over the shoulder thinking of things as they were done, 
do not have anything to do with them. It would not be 10 
Christian to exclude them from your organization, but 
merely use them to pad the roll. If you can find older 
men who will lead you acceptably and keep you in counte- 
nance, I am bound as an older man to advise you to follow 
them. But suit yourselves. Do not follow people that 15 
stand still. Just remind them that this is not a statical 
proposition; it is a movement, and if they cannot get a 
move on them they are not serviceable. 

Life, gentlemen— the life of society, the life of the 
world— has constantly to be fed from the bottom. It has 20 
to be fed by those great sources of strength which are 
constantly rising in new generations. Red blood has to 
be pumped into it. New fiber has to be suppHed. That 
is the reason I have always said that I believed in popular 
institutions. If you can guess beforehand whom your 25 
rulers are going to be, you can guess with a very great 
certainty that most of them will not be fit to rule. The 
beauty of popular institutions is that you do not know 
where the man is going to come from, and you do not care 
so he is the right man. You do not know whether he 30 
will come from the avenue or from the alley. You do 
not know whether he will come from the city or the farm. 
You do not know whether you will ever have heard that 
name before or not. Therefore you do not limit at any 



112 Woodrow Wilson 

point your supply of new strength. You do not say it 
has got to come through the blood of a particular family 
or through the processes of a particular training, or by 
anything except the native impulse and genius of the 
5 man himself. The humblest hovel, therefore, may pro- 
duce you your greatest man. A very humble hovel did 
produce you one of your greatest men. That is the process 
of life, this constant surging up of the new strength of 
unnamed, unrecognized, uncatalogued men who are just 

lo getting into the running, who are just coming up from 
the masses of the unrecognized multitude. You do not 
know when you will see above the level masses of the 
crowd some great stature lifted head and shoulders above 
the rest, shouldering its way, not violently but gently, 

15 to the front and saying, "Here am I; follow me." And 

his voice will be your voice, his thought will be your 

thought, and you will follow him as if you were following 

the best things in yourselves. 

When I think of an association of Christian young 

20 men I wonder that it has not already turned the world 
upside down. I wonder, not that it has done so much, 
for it has done a great deal, but that it has done so little; 
and I can only conjecture that it does not realize its own 
strength. I can only imagine that it has not yet got its 

25 pace. I wish I could believe, and I do believe, that at 
seventy it is just reaching its majority, and that from this 
time on a dream greater even than George Williams * 
ever dreamed will be realized in the great accumulating 
momentum of Christian men throughout the world. For, 

30 gentlerrien, this is an age in which the principles of men 
who utter public opinion dominate the world. It makes 
no difference what is done for the time being. After the 

* Sir George Williams, 1821-1905, an English philanthropist, 
founder of the Young Men's Christian Association. 



The Power of Christian Young Men 113 

struggle is over the jury will sit, and nobody can corrupt 
that jury. 

At one time I tried to write history. I did not know 
enough to write it, but I knew from experience how hard 
it was to find an historian out, and I trusted I would not 5 
be found out. I used to have this comfortable thought 
as I saw men struggling in the public arena. I used to 
think to myself, "This is all very well and very interesting. 
You probably assess yourself in such and such a way. 
Those who are your partisans assess you thus and so. 10 
Those who are your opponents urge a different verdict. 
But it does not make very much difference, because after 
you are dead and gone some quiet historian will sit in a 
secluded room and tell mankind for the rest of time just 
what to think about you, and his verdict, not the verdict 15 
of your partisans and not the verdict of your opponents, 
will be the verdict of posterity." I say that I used to say 
that to myself. It very largely was not so. And yet it 
was true in this sense: If the historian really speaks the 
judgment of the succeeding generation, then he really 20 
speaks the judgment also of the generations that succeed 
it, and his assessment, made without the passion of the 
time, made without partisan feeling in the matter— in 
other circumstances, when the air is cool— is the judgment 
of mankind upon your actions. 25 

Now, is it not very important that we who shall con- 
stitute a portion of the jury should get our best judgments 
to work and base them upon Christian forbearance and 
Christian principles, upon the idea that it is impossible by 
sophistication to establish that a thing that is wrong is 30 
right? And yet, while we are going to judge with the 
absolute standard of righteousness, we are going to judge 
with Christian feeling, being men of a like sort ourselves, 
suffering the same" temptations, having the same weak- 



114 Woodrow Wilson 

nesses, knowing the same passions; and while we do not 
condemn, we are going to seek to say and to live the truth. 
What I am hoping for is that these seventy years have just 
been a running start, and that now there will be a great 

5 rush of Christian principle upon the strongholds of evil and 
of ^\Tong in the world. Those strongholds are not as 
strong as they look. Almost every vicious man is afraid of 
society, and if you once open the door where he is, he will 
run. All you have to do is to fight, not with cannon but 

lo with light. 

May I illustrate it in this way? The Government of the 
United States has just succeeded in concluding a large 
number of treaties with the leading nations of the world, 
the sum and substance of which is this, that whenever any 

15 trouble arises the light shall shine on it for a year before 
anything is done; and my prediction is that after the 
light has shone on it for a year it will not be necessary to do 
anything; that after we know what happened, then we will 
know who was right and who was wTong. I believe that 

'20 light is the greatest sanitary influence in the world. That, 
I suppose, is scientific commonplace, because if you want 
to make a place wholesome the best instrument you can 
use is the sun; to let his rays in, let him search out all the 
miasma that may lurk there. So with moral light : It is the 

25 most wholesome and rectifying, as well as the most re- 
vealing, thing in the world, provided it be genuine moral 
light; not the light of inquisitiveness, not the light of the 
man who likes to turn up ugly things, not the light of the 
man who disturbs what is corrupt for the mere sake of the 

30 sensation that he creates by disturbing it, but the moral 
light, the light of the man who discloses it in order that all 
the sweet influences of the world may go in and make it 
better. 

That, in my judgment, is what the Young Men's 



The Power of Christian Young Men 115 

Christian Association can do. It can point out to its 
members the things that are wTong. It can guide the feet 
of those who are going astray; and when its members have 
realized the power of the Christian principle^ then they 
will not be men if they do not unite to see that the rest of 5 
the world exj^eriences the same emancipation and reaches 
the same happiness of release. 

I believe in the Young Men's Christian Association be- 
cause I believe in the progress of moral ideas in the world; 
and I do not know that I am sure of anything else. When 10 
you are after something and have formulated it and have 
done the very best thing you know how to do you have 
got to be sure for the time being that that is the thing to 
do. But you are a fool if in the back of your head you do 
not know it is possible that you are mistaken. All that 15 
you can claim is that that is the thing as you see it now and 
that you cannot stand still; that you must push forward 
the things that are right. It may turn out that you made 
mistakes, but what you do know is your direction, and 
you are sure you are moving in that way. I was once a col- 20 
lege reformer, until discouraged, and I remember a class- 
mate of mine saying, "Why, man, can't you let anything 
alone? " I said, 'T let everything alone that you can show 
me is not itself moving in the wrong direction, but I am 
not going to let those things alone that I see are going 25 
downhill"; and I borrowed this illustration from an 
ingenious writer. He says, ''If you have a post that is 
painted white and want to keep it white, you cannot let it 
alone; and if anybody says to you, 'Why don't you let that 
post alone,' you will say, 'Because I want it to stay white, 30 
and therefore I have got to paint it at least every second 
year.'" There isn't anything in this world that will not 
change if you absolutely let it alone, and therefore you 
have constantly to be attending to it to see that it is being 



Ii6 Woodrow Wilson 

taken care of in the right way and that, if it is part of the 
motive force of the world, it is moving in the right direc- 
tion. 
That means that eternal vigilance is the price, not only 
5 of liberty, but of a great many other things. It is the 
price of everything that is good. It is the price of one's own 
soul. It is the price of the souls of the people you love; and 
when it comes down to the final reckoning you have a 
standard that is immutable. What shall a man give in 

lo exchange for his own soul? Will he sell that? Will he 
consent to see another man sell his soul? Will he consent 
to see the conditions of his community such that men's 
souls are debauched and trodden underfoot in the mire? 
What shall he give in exchange for his own soul, or any 

15 other man's soul? And since the world, the world of 
affairs, the world of society, is nothing less and nothing 
more than all of us put together, it is a great enterprise for 
the salvation of the soul in this world as well as in the next. 
There is a text in Scripture that has always interested me 

20 profoundly. It says godliness is profitable in this life as 
well as in the life that is to come; and if you do not start it 
in this life, it will not reach the life that is to come. Your 
measurements, your directions, your whole momentum, 
have to be established before you reach the next w^orld. 

25 This world is intended as the place in which we shall show 
that we know how to grow in the stature of manliness and 
of righteousness. 

I have come here to bid Godspeed to the great work of 
the Young Men's Christian Association. I love to think 

30 of the gathering force of such things as this in the genera- 
tions to come. If a man had to measure the accomplish- 
ments of society, the progress of reform, the speed of the 
world's betterment, by the few little things that happened 
in his own life, by the trifling things that he can contribute 



The Power of Christian Young Men 117 

to accomplish, he would indeed feel that the cost was much 
greater than the result. But no man can look at the past 
of the history of this world without seeing a vision of the 
future of the history of this world; and when you think of 
the accumulated moral forces that have made one age 5 
better than another age in the progress of mankind, then 
you can open your eyes to the vision. You can see that 
age by age, though with a blind struggle in the dust of the 
road, though often mistaking the path and losing its way 
in the mire, mankind is yet — sometimes with bloody hands 10 
and battered knees — nevertheless struggling step after 
step up the slow stages to the day when he shall live in the 
full light which shines upon the uplands, where all the 
light that illumines mankind shines direct from the face of 
God. 15 



ANNUAL ADDRESS TO CONGRESS 

[Delivered at a joint session of tiie two Houses of Congress, De- 
cember 8, 1914.] 

Gentlemen of the Congress: 

The session upon which you are now entering will be the 
closing session of the Sixty-third Congress, a Congress, I 
venture to say, which will long be remembered for the 

5 great body of thoughtful and constructive work which it 
has done, in loyal response to the thought and needs of the 
country. I should like in this address to review the 
notable record and try to make adequate assessment of it; 
but no doubt we stand too near the work that has been 

10 done and are ourselves too much part of it to play the 
part of historians toward it. 

Our program of legislation with regard to the regulation 
of business is now virtually complete. It has been put 
forth, as we intended, as a whole, and leaves no conjecture 

15 as to what is to follow. The road at last lies clear and firm 
before business. It is a road which it can travel without 
fear or embarrassment. It is the road to ungrudged, un- 
clouded success. In it every honest man, every man who 
believes that the public interest is part of his own interest, 

20 may walk with perfect confidence. 

Moreover, our thoughts are now more of the future 
than of the past. While we have worked at our tasks of 
peace the circumstances of the whole age have been altered 
by war. What we have done for our o^^Tl land and our own 

25 people we did with the best that was in us, whether of 
character or of intelligence, with sober enthusiasm and a 
confidence in the principles upon which we were acting 

u8 



Annual Address to Congress 119 

which sustained us at every step of the difficult undertak- 
ing; but it is done. It has passed from our hands. It is 
now an established part of the legislation of the country. 
Its usefulness, its effects will disclose themselves in expe- 
rience. What chiefly strikes us now, as we look about us 5 
during these closing days of a year which will be forever 
memorable in the history of the world, is that we face new 
tasks, have been facing them these six months, must face 
them in the months to come, — face them without partisan 
feeling, like men who have forgotten everything but a 10 
common duty and the fact that we are representatives of a 
great people whose thought is not of us but of what 
America owes to herself and to all mankind in such circum- 
stances as these upon which we look amazed and anxious. 

War has interrupted the means of trade not only but 15 
also the processes of production. In Europe it is destroy- 
ing men and resources wholesale and upon a scale unprec- 
edented and appalling. There is reason to fear that the 
time is near, if it be not already at hand, when several of 
the countries of Europe will find it difficult to do for their 20 
people what they have hitherto been always easily able 
to do, — many essential and fundamental things. At any 
rate, they will need our help and our manifold services as 
they have never needed them before; and we should "be 
ready, more fit and ready than we have ever been. 25 

It is of equal consequence that the nations whom Europe 
has usually supplied with innumerable articles of manu- 
facture and commerce of which they are in constant need 
and without which their economic development halts 
and stands still can now get only a small part of what they 30 
formerly imported and eagerly look to us to supply their all 
but empty markets. This is particularly true of our own 
neighbors, the States, great and small, of Central and 
South America. Their lines of trade have hitherto run 



I20 Woodrow Wilson 

chiefly athwart the seas, not to our ports but to the ports 
of Great Britain and of the older continent of Europe. 
I do not stop to inquire why, or to make any comment on 
probable causes. What interests us just now is not the 
5 explanation but the fact, and our duty and opportunity 
in the presence of it. Here are markets which we must 
supply, and we must find the means of action. The United 
States, this great people for whom we speak and act, 
should be ready, as never before, to serve itself and to 

lo serve mankind; ready with its resources, its energies, its 
forces of production, and its means of distribution. 

It is a very practical matter, a matter of ways and 
means. We have the resources, but are we fully ready to 
use them? And, if we can make ready what we have, have 

15 we the means at hand to distribute it? We are not fully 
ready; neither have we the means of distribution. We 
are willing, but we are not fully able. We have the wish 
to serve and to serve greatly, generously; but we are not 
prepared as we should be. We are not ready to mobilize 

20 our resources at once. We are not prepared to use them 
immediately and at their best, without delay and without 
waste. 

To speak plainly, we have grossly erred in the way in 
which we have stunted and hindered the development of 

25 our merchant marine. And now, when we need ships, we 
have not got them. We have year after year debated, 
without end or conclusion, the best policy to pursue with 
regard to the use of the ores and forests and water powers 
of our national domain in the rich States of the West, 

30 when we should have acted; and they are still locked up. 
The key is still turned upon them, the door shut fast at 
which thousands of vigorous men, full of initiative, knock 
clamorously for admittance. The water power of our 
navigable streams outside the national domain also, even 



Annual Address to Congress 121 

in the eastern States, where we have worked and planned 
for generations, is still not used as it might be, because we 
will and we won't; because the laws we have made do not 
intelligently balance encouragement against restraint. 
We withhold by regulation. 5 

I have come to ask you to remedy and correct these 
mistakes and omissions, even at this short session of a 
Congress which would certainly seem to have done all 
the work that could reasonably be expected of it. The 
time and the circumstances are extraordinary, and so 10 
must our efforts be also. 

Fortunately, two great measures, finely conceived, the 
one to unlock, with proper safeguards, the resources of the 
national domain, the other to encourage the use of the 
navigable waters outside that domain for the generation 15 
of power, have already passed the House of Representa- 
tives and are ready for immediate consideration and action 
by the Senate. With the deepest earnestness I urge their 
prompt passage. In them both we turn our backs upon 
hesitation and makeshift and formulate a genuine policy 20 
of use and conservation, in the best sense of those words. 
We owe the one measure not only to the people of that 
great western country for whose free and systematic de- 
velopment, as it seems to me, our legislation has done so 
little, but also to the people of the Nation as a whole; and 25 
we as clearly owe the other in fulfilhnent of our repeated 
promises that the water power of the country should in 
fact as well as in name be put at the disposal of great in- 
dustries which can make economical and profitable use 
of it, the rights of the public being adequately guarded 30 
the while, and monopoly in the use prevented. To have 
begun such measures and not completed them would m- 
deed mar the record of this great Congress very seriously. 
I hope and confidently believe that they will be completed. 



122 Woodrow Wilson 

And there is another great piece of legislation which 
awaits and should receive the sanction of the Senate: I 
mean the bill which gives a larger measure of self-govern- 
ment to the people of the Philippines. How better, in 

5 this time of anxious questioning and perplexed policy, 
could we show our confidence in the principles of liberty, 
as the source as well as the expression of life, how better 
could we demonstrate our own self-possession and stead- 
fastness in the courses of justice and disinterestedness 

lo than by thus going calmly forward to fulfill our promises 
to a dependent people, who will now look more anxiously 
than ever to see whether we have indeed the liberality, the 
unselfishness, the courage, the faith we have boasted and 
professed. I cannot believe that the Senate will let this 

15 great measure of constructive justice await the action of 
another Congress. Its passage would nobly crown the 
record of these two years of memorable labor. 

But I think that you will agree with me that this does 
not complete the toll of our duty. How are we to carry 

20 our goods to the empty markets of which I have spoken 
if we have not the ships? How are we to build up a great 
trade if we have not the certain and constant means of 
transportation upon which all profitable and useful com- 
merce depends? And how are we to get the ships if we 

25 wait for the trade to develop without them? To correct 
the many mistakes by which we have discouraged and all 
but destroyed the merchant marine of the country, to 
retrace the steps by which we have, it seems almost de- 
liberately, withdrawn our flag from the seas, except where, 

30 here and there, a ship of war is bidden carry it or some 
wandering yacht displays it, would take a long time and 
involve many detailed items of legislation, and the trade 
which we ought immediately to handle would disappear 
or find other channels while we debated the items. 



Annual Address to Congress 123 

The case is not unlike that which confronted us when 
our own continent was to be opened up to settlement and 
industry, and we needed long lines of railway, extended 
means of transportation prepared beforehand, if develop- 
ment was not to lag intolerably and wait interminably. 5 
We lavishly subsidized the building of transcontinental 
railroads. We look back upon that with regret now, be- 
cause the subsidies led to many scandals of which we are 
ashamed; but we know that the railroads had to be built, 
and if we had it to do over again we should of course build 10 
them, but in another way. Therefore I propose another 
way of providing the means of transportation, which 
must precede, not tardily follow, the development of our 
trade with our neighbor states of America. It may seem 
a reversal of the natural order of things, but it is true, 15 
that the routes of trade must be actually opened — by 
many ships and regular sailings and moderate charges — 
before streams of merchandise will flow freely and profit- 
ably through them. 

Hence the pending shipping bill, discussed at the last 20 
session but as yet passed by neither House. In my judg- 
ment such legislation is imperatively needed and cannot 
wisely be postponed. The Government must open these 
gates of trade, and open them wide; open them before it 
is altogether profitable to open them, or altogether reason- 25 
able to ask private capital to open them at a venture. It 
is not a question of the Government monopolizing the 
field. It should take action to make it certain that trans- 
portation at reasonable rates will be promptly provided, 
even where the carriage is not at first profitable; and then, 30 
when the carriage has become sufficiently profitable to 
attract and engage private capital, and engage it in abun- 
dance, the Government ought to withdraw. I very earn- 
estly hope that the Congress will be of this opinion, and 



124 Wood row Wilson 

that both Houses will adopt this exceedingly important 
bill. 

The great subject of rural credits still remains to be 
dealt with, and it is a matter of deep regret that the diflfi- 

5 culties of the subject have seemed to render it impossible 
to complete a bill for passage at this session. But it can- 
not be perfected yet, and therefore there are no other 
constructive measures the necessity for w^hich I will at 
this time call your attention to; but I would be negligent 

lo of a very manifest duty were I not to call the attention of 
the Senate to the fact that the proposed convention for 
safety at sea aw^aits its confirmation and that the limit 
fixed in the convention itself for its acceptance is the last 
day of the present month. The conference in which this 

15 convention originated was called by the United States; 
the representatives of the United States played a very 
influential part indeed in framing the provisions of the 
proposed convention; and those provisions are in them- 
selves for the most part admirable. It would hardly be 

20 consistent w4th the part we have played in the w^hole 
matter to let it drop and go by the board as if forgotten 
and neglected. It was ratified in May last by the German 
Government and in August by the Parliament of Great 
Britain. It marks a most hopeful and decided advance 

25 in international civilization. We should show our earnest 
good faith in a great matter by adding our own acceptance 
of it. 

There is another matter of which I must make special 
mention, if I am to discharge my conscience, lest it should 

30 escape your attention. It may seem a very small thing. 
It affects only a single item of appropriation. But many 
human lives and many great enterprises hang upon it. 
It is the matter of making adequate provision for the 
survey and charting of our coasts. It is immediately 



Annual Address to Congress 125 

pressing and exigent in connection with the immense 
coast line of Alaska, a coast line greater than that of the 
United States themselves, though it is also very important 
indeed with regard to the older coasts of the continent. 
We cannot use our great Alaskan domain, ships will not 5 
ply thithe;-, if those coasts and their many hidden dangers 
are not thoroughly surveyed and charted. The work is 
incomplete at almost every point. Ships and lives have 
been lost in threading what were supposed to be well- 
known main channels. We have not provided adequate 10 
vessels or adequate machinery for the survey and chart- 
ing. We have used old vessels that were not big enough 
or strong enough and which were so nearly unseaworthy 
that our inspectors would not have allowed private owners 
to send them to sea. This is a matter which, as I have said, 15 
seems small, but is in reality very great. Its importance 
has only to be looked into to be appreciated. 

Before I close may I say a few words upon two topics, 
much discussed out of doors, upon which it is highly im- 
portant that our judgments should be clear, definite, and 20 
steadfast? 

One of these is economy in government expenditures. 
The duty of economy is not debatable. It is manifest and 
imperative. In the appropriations we pass we are spend- 
ing the money of the great people whose servants we 25 
are, — not our own. We are trustees and responsible 
stewards in the spending. The only thing debatable and 
upon which we should be careful to make our thought 
and purpose clear is the kind of economy demanded of us. 
I assert with the greatest confidence that the people of 30 
the United States are not jealous of the amount their 
Government costs if they are sure that they get what they 
need and deske for the outlay, that the money is being 
spent for objects of which they approve, and that it is 



126 Woodrow Wilson 

being applied with good business sense and manage- 
ment. 

Governments grow, piecemeal, both in their tasks and 
in the means by which those tasks are to be performed, 

5 and very few Governments are organized, I venture to 
say, as wise and experienced business men would organize 
them if they had a clean sheet of paper to write upon. 
Certainly the Government of the United States is not. 
I think that it is generally agreed that there should be a 

lo systematic reorganization and reassembling of its parts 
so as to secure greater efficiency and effect considerable 
savings in expense. But the amount of money saved in 
that way would, I believe, though no doubt considerable 
in itself, running, it may be, into the millions, be relatively 

15 small, — small, I mean, in proportion to the total neces- 
sary outlays of the Government. It vrould be thoroughly 
worth effecting, as every saving would, great or small. 
Our duty is not altered by the scale of the saving. But 
my point is that the people of the United States do not 

20 wish to curtail the activities of this Government; they 
wish, rather, to enlarge them; and with every enlargement, 
with the mere growth, indeed, of the country itself, there 
must come, of course, the inevitable increase of expense. 
The sort of economy we ought to practice may be effected, 

25 and ought to be effected, by a careful study and assess- 
ment of the tasks to be performed; and the money spent 
ought, to be made to yield the best possible returns in ef- 
ficiency and achievement. And, like good stewards, we 
should so account for every dollar of our appropriations 

30 as to make it perfectly evident what it was spent for and 
in what way it was spent. 

It is not expenditure but extravagance that we should 
fear being criticized for; not paying for the legitimate 
enterprises and undertakings of a great Government whose 



Annual Address to Congress 127 

people command what it should do, but adding what will 
benefit only a few or pouring money out for what need not 
have been undertaken at all or might have been postponed 
or better and more economically conceived and carried 
out. The Nation is not niggardly; it is very generous. 5 
It will chide us only if we forget for whom we pay money 
out and whose money it is we pay. These are large and 
general standards, but they are not very difficult of ap- 
plication to particular cases. 

The other topic I shall take leave to mention goes 10 
deeper into the principles of our national life and policy. 
It is the subject of national defense. 

It cannot be discussed without first answering some 
very searching questions. It is said in some quarters that 
we are not prepared for war. What is meant by being 15 
prepared? Is it meant that we are not ready upon brief 
notice to put a nation in the field, a nation of men trained 
to arms? Of course we are not ready to do that; and we 
shall never be in time of peace so long as we retain our 
present political principles and institutions. And what 20 
is it that it is suggested we should be prepared to do? To 
defend ourselves against attack? We have always found 
means to do that, and shall find them whenever it is neces- 
sary without calling our people away from their necessary 
tasks to render compulsory military service in times of 25 
peace. 

Allow me to speak with great plainness and directness 
upon this great matter and to avow my convictions with 
deep earnestness. I have tried to know what America is, 
what her people think, what they are, what they most 30 
cherish and hold dear. I hope that some of their finer 
passions are in my own heart, — some of the great concep- 
tions and desires which gave birth to this Government and 
which have made the voice of this people a voice of peace 



128 Woodrow Wilson 

and hope and liberty among the peoples of the world, and 
that, speaking my own thoughts, I shall, at least in part, 
speak theirs also, however faintly and inadequately, upon 
this vital matter. 

5 We are at peace with all the world. No one who speaks 
counsel based on fact or drawn from a just and candid 
interpretation of realities can say that there is reason to 
fear that from any quarter our independence or the in- 
tegrity of our territory is threatened. Dread of the power 

lo of any other nation we are incapable of. We are not jeal- 
ous of rivalry in the fields of commerce or of any other 
peaceful achievement. We mean to live our own lives as 
we will; but we mean also to let live. We are, indeed, a 
true friend to all the nations of the world, because we 

15 threaten none, covet the possessions of none, desire the 
overthrow of none. Our friendship can be accepted and 
is accepted without reservation, because it is offered in a 
spirit and for a purpose which no one need ever question 
or suspect. Therein lies our greatness. We are the cham- 

20 pions of peace and of concord. And we should be very 
jealous of this distinction which we have sought to earn. 
Just now we should be particularly jealous of it, because 
it is our dearest present hope that this character and repu- 
tation may presently, in God's providence, bring us an 

25 opportunity such as has seldom been vouchsafed any 
nation, the opportunity to counsel and obtain peace in 
the world and reconciliation and a healing settlement of 
many a matter that has cooled and interrupted the friend- 
ship of nations. This is the time above all others when 

30 we should wish and resolve to keep our strength by self- 
possession, our influence by preserving our ancient prin- 
ciples of action. 

From the first we have had a clear and settled policy 
with regard to military establishments. We never have 



Annual Address to Congress 129 

had, and while we retain our present principles and ideals 
we never shall have, a large standing army. If asked. 
Are you ready to defend yourselves? we reply, Most 
assuredly, to the utmost; and yet we shall not turn America 
into a mihtary camp. We will not ask our young men to 5 
spend the best years of their lives making soldiers of 
themselves. There is another sort of energy in us. It will 
know how to declare itself and make itself effective should 
occasion arise. And especially when half the world is on 
fire we shall be careful to make our moral insurance against 10 
the spread of the conflagration very definite and certain 
and adequate indeed. 

Let us remind ourselves, therefore, of the only thing we 
can do or will do. We must depend in every time of na- 
tional peril, in the future as in the past, not upon a stand- 15 
ing army, nor yet upon a reserve army, but upon a cit- 
izenry trained and accustomed to arms. It will be right 
enough, right American policy, based upon our accustomed 
principles and practices, to provide a system by which 
every citizen who will volunteer for the training may be 20 
made familiar with the use of modern arms, the rudiments 
or drill and maneuver, and the maintenance and sanitation 
of camps. We should encourage such training and make 
it a means of discipline which our young men will learn 
to value. It is right that we should provide it not only, 25 
but that we should make it as attractive as possible, and 
so induce our young men to undergo it at such times as 
they can command a little freedom and can seek the 
physical development they need, for mere health's sake, 
if for nothing more. Every means by which such things 30 
can be stimulated is legitimate, and such a method smacks 
of true American ideas. It is right, too, that the Na- 
tional Guard of the States should be developed and 
strengthened by every means which is not inconsistent 



130 Woodrow Wilson 

with our obligations to our own people or with the e3tab- 
lished policy of our Government. And this, also, not be- 
cause the time or occasion specially calls for such meas- 
ures, but because it should be our constant policy to make 
5 these provisions for our national peace and safety. 

More than this carries with it a reversal of the whole 
history and character of our poHty. More than this, 
proposed at this time, permit me to say, would mean 
merely that we had lost our self-possession, that we had 

10 been thrown off our balance by a war with which we have 
nothing to do, whose causes cannot touch us, whose very 
existence affords us opportunities of friendship and dis- 
interested service which should make us ashamed of any 
thought of hostility or fearful preparation for trouble. 

15 This is assuredly the opportunity for which a people and a 
government like ours were raised up, the opportunity not 
only to speak but actually to embody and exemplify the 
counsels of peace and amity and the lasting concord which 
is based on justice and fair and generous dealing. 

20 A powerful navy we have always regarded as our proper 
and natural means of defense; and it has always been of 
defense that we have thought, never of aggression or of 
conquest. But who shall tell us now what sort of a navy to 
build? We shall take leave to be strong upon the seas, in 

25 the future as in the past; and there will be no thought of 
offense or of provocation in that. Our ships are our 
natural bulwarks. When will the experts tell us just what 
kind we should construct — and when will they be right for 
ten years together, if the relative efficiency of craft of 

30 different kinds and uses continues to change as we have 

seen it change under our very eyes in these last few months? 

But I turn away from the subject. It is not new. There 

is no new need to discuss it. We shall not alter our attitude 

toward it because some amongst us are nervous and ex- 



Annual Address to Congress 131 

cited. We shall easily and sensibly agree upon a policy of 
defense. The question has not changed its aspect because 
the times are not normal. Our policy will not be for an 
occasion. It will be conceived as a permanent and settled 
thing, which we will pursue at all seasons, without haste 5 
and after a fashion perfectly consistent with the peace of 
the world, the abiding friendship of states, and the un- 
hampered freedom of all with whom we deal. Let there be 
no misconception. The country has been misinformed. 
We have not been negligent of national defense. We are 10 
not unmindful of the great responsibility resting upon us. 
We shall learn and profit by the lesson of every experience 
and every new circumstance; and what is needed will be 
adequately done. 

I close, as I began, by reminding you of the great tasks 15 
and duties of peace which challenge our best powers and in- 
vite us to build what will last, the tasks to which we can ad- 
dress ourselves now and at all times with free-hearted zest 
and with all the finest gifts of constructive wisdom we pos- 
sess. To develop our life and our resources; to supply our 20 
own people, and the people of the world as their need arises, 
from the abundant plenty of our fields and our marts of 
trade; to enrich the commerce of our own States and of the 
world with the products of our mines, our farms, and our 
factories, with the creations of our thought and the fruits 25 
of our character, — this is what will hold our attention and 
our enthusiasm steadily, now and in the years to come, as 
we strive to show in our life as a nation what liberty and 
the inspirations of an emancipated spirit may do for men 
and for societies, for individuals, for states, and for man- 30 
kind. 



A MESSAGE 

[Returning to the House of Representatives without approval an 
act to regulate the immigration of aliens to and the residence of 
aliens in the United States.] 

To THE House of Representatives: 

It is with unaffected regret that I find myself constrained 
by clear conviction to return this bill (H. R. 6060, ''An act 
to regulate the immigration of aliens to and the residence 

5 of ahens in the United States") without my signature. 
Not only do I feel it to be a very serious matter to exercise 
the power of veto in any case, because it involves opposing 
the single judgment of the President to the judgment of a 
majority of both the Houses of the Congress, a step which 

10 no man who realizes his own habihty to error can take 
without great hesitation, but also because this particular 
bill is in so many important respects admirable, well con- 
ceived, and desirable. Its enactment into law would 
undoubtedly enhance the efficiency and improve the 

15 methods of handling the important branch of the public 
service to which it relates. But candor and a sense of duty 
with regard to the responsibility so clearly imposed upon 
me by the Constitution in matters of legislation leave me 
no choice but to dissent. 

20 In two particulars of vital consequence this bill em- 
bodies a radical departure from the traditional and long- 
established pohcy of this country, a policy in which our 
people have conceived the very character of their Govern- 
ment to be expressed, the very mission and spirit of the 

25 Nation in respect of its relations to the peoples of the 
world outside their borders. It seeks to all but close en- 

132 



A Message 133 

tirely the gates of asylum which have always been open to 
those who could find nowhere else the right and oppor- 
tunity of constitutional agitation for what they conceived 
to be the natural and inahenable rights of men; and it 
excludes those to whom the opportunities of elementary 5 
education have been denied, without regard to their 
character, their purposes, or their natural capacity. 

Restrictions like these, adopted earlier in our history as a 
Nation, would very materially have altered the course 
and cooled the humane ardors of our politics. The right 10 
of political asylum has brought to this country many a 
man of noble character and elevated purpose who was 
marked as an outlaw in his own less fortunate land, and 
who has yet become an ornament to our citizenship and 
to our public councils. The children and the compatriots 15 
of these illustrious Americans must stand amazed to see 
the representatives of their Nation now resolved, in the 
fullness of our national strength and at the maturity of 
our great institutions, to risk turning such men back from 
our shores without test of quality or purpose. It is difficult 20 
for me to believe that the full effect of this feature of the 
bill was realized when it was framed and adopted, and it is 
impossible for me to assent to it in the form in which it is 

here cast. 

The hteracy test and the tests and restrictions which 25 
accompany it constitute an even more radical change in the 
poHcy of the Nation. Hitherto we have generously kept 
our doors open to all who were not unfitted by reason of 
disease or incapacity for self-support or such personal 
records and antecedents as were likely to make them a 30 
menace to our peace and order or to the wholesome and 
essential relationships of life. In this bill it is proposed to 
turn away from tests of character and of quaUty and im- 
pose tests which exclude and restrict; for the new tests 



134 Woodrow Wilson 

here embodied are not tests of quality or of character or of 
personal fitness, but tests of opportunity. Those who come 
seeking opportunity are not to be admitted unless they 
have already had one of the chief of the opportunities they 

5 seek, the opportunity of education. The object of such 
provisions is restriction, not selection. 

If the people of this country have made up their minds 
to limit the number of immigrants by arbitrary tests and 
so reverse the policy of all the generations of Americans 

lo that have gone before them, it is their right to do so. I am 
their servant and have no license to stand in their way. 
But I do not believe that they have. I respectfully submit 
that no one can quote their mandate to that effect. Has 
any pohtical party ever avowed a policy of restriction in 

15 this fundamental matter, gone to the country on it, and 
been commissioned to control its legislation? Does this 
bill rest upon the conscious and universal assent and desire 
of the American people? I doubt it. It is because I doubt 
it that I make bold to dissent from it. I am willing to 

20 abide by the verdict, but not until it has been rendered. 
Let the platforms of parties speak out upon this pohcy and 
the people pronounce their wish. The matter is too fun- 
damental to be settled otherwise. 

I have no pride of opinion in this question. I am not 

25 foolish enough to profess to know the wishes and ideals of 
America better than the body of her chosen representatives 
know them. I only want instruction direct from those 
whose fortunes, with ours and all men's, are involved. 

Woodrow Wilson. 

30 The White House, 28 January, igij. 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE UNITED STATES 
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 

[Delivered in Washington, February 3, 19 15.] 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I feel that it is hardly fair to you for me to come in in 
this casual fashion among a body of men who have been 
seriously discussing great questions, and it is hardly fair 
to me, because I come in cold, not having had the advan- 5 
tage of sharing the atmosphere of your deliberations and 
catching the feeling of your conference. Moreover, I 
hardly know just how to express my interest in the things 
you are undertaking. When a man stands outside an 
organization and speaks to it he is too apt to have the 10 
tone of outside commendation, as who should say, "I 
would desire to pat you on the back and say 'Good boys; 
you are doing well!'" I would a great deal rather have 
you receive me as if for the time being I were one of your 
o\vn number. iS 

Because the longer I occupy the office that I now 
occupy the more I regret any lines of separation; the 
more I deplore any feeling that one set of men has one 
set of interests and another set of men another set of 
interests; the more I feel the solidarity of the Nation — 20 
the impossibility of separating one interest from another 
without misconceiving it; the necessity that we should all 
understand one another, in order that we may understand 
ourselves. 

There is an illustration which I have used a great many 25 
times. I will use it again, because it is the most service- 
able to my own mind. We often speak of a man who 

13s 



136 Woodrow Wilson 

cannot find his way in some jungle or some desert as hav- 
ing ''lost himself." Did you never reflect that that is 
the only thing he has not lost? He is there. He has lost 
the rest of the world. He has no fixed point by which to 

5 steer. He does not know which is north, which is south, 
which is east, which is west; and if he did know, he is so 
confused that he would not know in which of those direc- 
tions his goal lay. Therefore, following his heart, he 
walks in a great circle from right to left and comes back 

10 to where he started — to himself again. To my mind that 
is a picture of the world. If you have lost sight of other 
interests and do not know the relation of your own inter- 
ests to those other interests, then you do not understand 
your o^vn interests, and have lost yourself. What you 

15 want is orientation, relationship to the points of the com- 
pass; relationship to the other people in the world; vital 
connections which you have for the time being severed. 

I am particularly glad to express my admiration for 
the kind of organization which you have drawn together. 

20 I have attended banquets of chambers of commerce in 
various parts of the country and have got the impression 
at each of those banquets that there was only one city 
in the country. It has seemed to me that those associa- 
tions were meant in order to destroy men's perspective, 

25 in order to destroy their sense of relative proportions. 
Worst of all, if I may be permitted to say so, they were 
intended to boost something in particular. Boosting is 
a very unhandsome thing. Advancing enterprise is a very 
handsome thing, but to exaggerate local merits in order 

30 to create disproportion in the general development is 
not a particularly handsome thing or a particularly in- 
telligent thing. A city cannot grow on the face of a great 
state like a mushroom on that one spot. Its roots are 
throughout the state, and unless the state it is in, or the 



Before the U. S. Chamber of Commerce 137 

region it draws from, can itself thrive and pulse with life 
as a whole, the city can have no healthy growth. You 
forget the wide rootages of everything when you boost 
some particular region. There are dangers which prob- 
ably you all understand in the mere practice of advertise- 5 
ment. When a man begins to advertise himself there are 
certain points that are somewhat exaggerated, and I 
have noticed that men who exaggerate most, most quickly 
lose any proper conception of what their own proportions 
are. Therefore, these local centers of enthusiasm may 10 
be local centers of mistake if they are not very wisely 
guided and if they do not themselves realize their relations 
to the other centers of enthusiasm and of advancement. 

The advantage about a Chamber of Commerce of the 
United States is that there is only one way to boost the 15 
United States, and that is by seeing to it that the condi- 
tions under which business is done throughout the whole 
country are the best possible conditions. There cannot 
be any disproportion about that. If you draw your sap 
and your vitality from all quarters, then the more sap 20 
and vitality there is in you the more there is in the com- 
monwealth as a whole, and every time you lift at all you 
lift the whole level of manufacturing and mercantile 
enterprise. Moreover, the advantage of it is that you 
cannot boost the United States in that way without 25 
understanding the United States. You learn a great deal. 
I agreed with a colleague of mine in the Cabinet the other 
day that we had never attended in our lives before a school 
to compare with that we were now attending for the 
purpose of gaining a liberal education. 30 

Of course, I learn a great many things that are not so, " 
but the interesting thing about that is this: Things that 
are not so do not match. If you hear enough of them, 
you see there is no pattern whatever; it is a crazy quilt. 



138 Woodrow Wilson 

Whereas, the truth always matches, piece by piece, with 
other parts of the truth. No man can lie consistently, 
and he cannot lie about everything if he talks to you 
long. I would guarantee that if enough Uars talked to 

5 you, you w^ould get the truth; because the parts that 
they did not invent w^ould match one another, and the 
parts that they did invent would not match one another. 
Talk long enough, therefore, and see the connections 
clearly enough, and you can patch together the case as a 

10 whole. I had somewhat that experience about Mexico, 
and that w^as about the only way in which I learned any- 
thing that was true about it. For there had been vivid 
imaginations and many special interests which depicted 
things as they wished me to believe them to be. 

15 Seriously, the task of this body is to match all the facts 
of business throughout the country and to see the vast 
and consistent pattern of it. That is the reason I think 
you are to be congratulated upon the fact that you can- 
not do this thing without common counsel. There isn't 

20 any man who knows enough to comprehend the United 
States. It is cooperative effort, necessarily. You can- 
not perform the functions of this Chamber of Commerce 
without drawing in not only a vast number of men, but 
men, and a number of men, from every region and section 

25 of the country. The minute this association falls into the 
hands, if it ever should, of men from a single section or 
men with a single set of interests most at heart, it will 
go to seed and die. Its strength must come from the 
uttermost parts of the land and must be compounded of 

30 brains and comprehensions of every sort. It is a very 
noble and handsome picture for the imagination, and I 
have asked myself before I came here to-day, what relation 
you could bear to the Government of the United States 
and what relation the Government could bear to you? 



Before the U. S. Chamber of Commerce 139 

There are two aspects and activities of the Govern- 
ment with which you will naturally come into most direct 
contact. The first is the Government's power of inquiry, 
systematic and disinterested inquiry, and its power of 
scientific assistance. You get an illustration of the latter, 5 
for example, in the Department of Agriculture. Has it 
occurred to you, I wonder, that we are just upon the eve 
of a time when our Department of Agriculture will be of 
infinite importance to the whole world? There is a short- 
age of food in the world now. That shortage will be much 10 
more serious a few months from now than it is now. It is 
necessary that we should plant a great deal more; it is 
necessary that our lands should yield more per acre than 
they do now; it is necessary that there should not be a 
plow or a spade idle in this country if the world is to be 15 
fed. And the methods of our farmers must feed upon the 
scientific information to be derived from the State de- 
partments of agriculture, and from that taproot of all, 
the United States Department of Agriculture. The object 
and use of that department is to inform men of the latest 20 
developments and disclosures of science with regard to 
all the processes by which soils can be put to their proper 
use and their fertility made the greatest possible. Sim- 
ilarly with the Bureau of Standards. It is ready to supply 
those things by which you can set norms, you can set 25 
bases, for all the scientific processes of business. 

I have a great admiration for the scientific parts of the 
Government of the United States, and it has amazed 
me that so few men have discovered them. Here in these 
departments are quiet men, trained to the highest degree 30 
of skill, serving for a petty remuneration along lines that 
are infinitely useful to mankind; and yet in some cases 
they waited to be discovered until this Chamber of Com- 
merce of the United States was established. Coming to 



140 Woodrow Wilson 

this city, officers of that association found that there were 
here things that were infinitely useful to them and with 
which the whole United States ought to be put into com- 
munication. 
5 The Government of the United States is very properly 
a great instrumentality of inquiry and information. One 
thing we are just beginning to do that we ought to have 
done long ago: We ought long ago to have had our Bureau 
of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. We ought long ago 

10 to have sent the best eyes of the Government out into 
the world to see where the opportunities and openings of 
American commerce and American genius were to be 
found — men who WTre not sent out as the commercial 
agents of any particular set of business men in the United 

15 States, but who were eyes for the whole business com- 
munity. I have been reading consular reports for twenty 
years. In what I came to regard as an evil day the Con- 
gressman from my district began to send me the consular 
reports, and they ate up more and more of my time. They 

20 are very interesting, but they are a good deal like what 
the old lady said of the dictionary, that it was very inter- 
esting but a little disconnected. You get a picture of 
the world as if a spotlight were being dotted about over 
the surface of it. Here you see a glimpse of this, and here 

25 you see a glimpse of that, and through the medium of 
some consuls you do not see anything at all. Because 
the consul has to have eyes and the consul has to know 
what he is looking for. A literary friend of mine said 
that he used to believe in the maxim that ''everything 

30 comes to the man who waits," but he discovered after 
awhile by practical experience that it needed an additional 
clause, "provided he knows what he is waiting for." Un- 
less you know what you are looking for and have trained 
eyes to see it when it comes your way, it may pass you 



Before the U. S. Chamber of Commerce 14I 

unnoticed. We are just beginning to do, systematically 
and scientifically, what we ought long ago to have done, 
to employ the Government of the United States to survey 
the world in order that American commerce might be 
guided. S 

But there are other ways of using the Government of 
the United States, ways that have long been tried, though 
not always with conspicuous success or fortunate results. 
You can use the Government of the United States by in- 
fluencing its legislation. That has been a very active in- 10 
dustry, but it has not always been managed in the in- 
terest of the whole people. It is very instructive and 
useful for the Government of the United States to have 
such means as you are ready to supply for getting a sort 
of consensus of opinion which proceeds from no particular 15 
quarter and originates with no particular interest. In- 
formation is the very foundation of all right action in 
legislation. 

I remember once, a good many years ago, I was attend- 
ing one of the local chambers of commerce of the United 20 
States at a time when everybody was complaining that 
Congress was interfering with business. If you have 
heard that complaint recently and supposed that it was 
original with the men who made it, you have not lived as 
long as I have. It has been going on ever since I can 25 
remember. The complaint came most vigorously from 
men who were interested in large corporate development. 
I took the liberty to say to that body of men, whom I did 
not know, that I took it for granted that there were a 
great many lawyers among them, and that it was likely 30 
that the more prominent of those lawyers were the inti- 
mate advisors of the corporations of that region. I said 
that I had met a great many lawyers from whom the com- 
plaint had come most vigorously, not only that there was 



142 Woodrow Wilson 

too much legislation with regard to corporations, but that 
it was ignorant legislation. I said, ''Now, the responsi- 
bility is with you. If the legislation is mistaken, you are 
on the inside and know where the mistakes are being 

5 made. You know not only the innocent and right things 
that your corporations are doing, but you know the other 
things, too. Knowing how they are done, you can be ex- 
pert advisors as to how the wrong things can be prevented. 
If, therefore, this thing is handled ignorantly, there is 

10 nobody to blame but yourselves." If we on the outside 
cannot understand the thing and cannot get advice from 
the inside, then we will have to do it with the flat hand 
and not with the touch of skill and discrimination. Isn't 
that true? Men on the inside of business know how busi- 

15 ness is conducted and they cannot complain if men on the 
outside make mistakes about business if they do not come 
from the inside and give the kind of advice which is 
necessary. 

The trouble has been that when they came in the past — ■ 

20 for I think the thing is changing very rapidly — they came 
with all their bristles out; they came on the defensive; 
they came to see, not what they could accomplish, but 
what they could prevent. They did not come to guide; 
they came to block. That is of no use whatever to the 

25 general body politic. What has got to pervade us like a 
great motive power is that we cannot, and must not, 
separate our interests from one another, but must pool 
our interests. A man who is trying to fight for his single 
hand is fighting against the community and not fighting 

30 with it. There are a great many dreadful things about 
war, as nobody needs to be told in this day of distress and 
of terror, but there is one thing about war which has a 
very splendid side, and that is the consciousness that a 
whole nation gets that they must all act as a unit for a 



Before the U. S. Chamber of Commerce 143 

common end. And when peace is as handsome as war 
there will be no war. When men, I mean, engage in the 
pursuits of peace in the same spirit of self-sacrifice and 
of conscious service of the community with which, at 
any rate, the common soldier engages in war, then shall 5 
there be wars no more. You have moved the vanguard 
for the United States in the purposes of this association 
just a Httle nearer that ideal. That is the reason I am 
here, because I believe it. 

There is a specific matter about which I, for one, want 10 
your advice. Let me say, if I may say it without disre- 
spect, that I do not think you are prepared to give it right 
away. You will have to make some rather extended in- 
quiries before you are ready to give it. What I am think- 
ing of is competition in foreign markets as between the 15 
merchants of different nations. 

I speak of the subject with a certain degree of hesitation, 
because the thing farthest from my thought is taking ad- 
vantage of nations now disabled from playing their full 
part in that competition, and seeking a sudden selfish 20 
advantage because they are for the time being disabled. 
Pray believe me that we ought to eliminate all that thought 
from our minds and consider this matter as if we and the 
other nations now at war were in the normal circumstances 
of commerce. ^ ^ 25 

There is a normal circumstance of commerce in which 
we are apparently at a disadvantage. Our anti-trust laws 
are thought by some to make it illegal for merchants in 
the United States to form combinations for the purpose 
of strengthening themselves in taking advantage of the 30 
opportunities of foreign trade. That is a very serious 
matter for this reason: There are some corporations, and 
some firms for all I know, whose business is great enough 
and whose resources are abundant enough to enable them 



144 Woodrow Wilson 

to establish selling agencies in foreign countries; to enable 
them to extend the long credits which in some cases are 
necessary in order to keep the trade they desire; to enable 
them, in other words, to organize their business in foreign 
5 territory in a way which the smaller man cannot afford 
to do. His business has not grown big enough to permit 
him to establish selling agencies. The export commission 
merchant, perhaps, taxes him a little too highly to make 
that an available competitive means of conducting and 

lo extending his business. 

The question arises, therefore, how are the smaller mer- 
chants, how are the younger and weaker corporations going 
to get a foothold as against the combinations which are 
permitted and even encouraged by foreign governments 

15 in this field of competition? There are governments which, 
as you know, distinctly encourage the formation of great 
combinations in each particular field of commerce in 
order to maintain selling agencies and to extend long 
credits, and to use and maintain the machinery which is 

20 necessary for the extension of business; and American 
merchants feel that they are at a very considerable disad- 
vantage in contending against that. The matter has been 
many times brought to my attention, and I have each 
time suspended judgment. I want to be shown this: I 

25 want to be shown how such a combination can be made 
and conducted in a way which will not close it against 
the use of everybody who wants to use it. A combination 
has a tendency to exclude new members. When a group 
of men get control of a good thing, they do not see any 

30 particular point in letting other people into the good 
thing. What I would like very much to be shown, there- 
fore, is a method of cooperation which is not a method 
of combination. Not that the two words are mutually 
exclusive, but we have come to have a special meaning at- 



Before the U. S. Chamber of Commerce 145 

tached to the word '' combination." Most of our combina- 
tions have a safety lock, and you have to know the com- 
bination to get in. I want to know how these cooperative 
methods can be adopted for the benefit of everybody who 
wants to use them, and I say frankly if I can be shown 5 
that, I am for them. If I cannot be shown that, I am 
against them. I hasten to add that I hopefully expect I 
can be shown that. 

You, as I have just now intimated, probably cannot 
show it to me offhand, but by the methods which you 10 
have the means of using you certainly ought to be able 
to throw a vast deal of light on the subject. Because the 
minute you ask the small merchant, the small banker, 
the country man, how he looks upon these things and how 
he thinks they ought to be arranged in order that he can 15 
use them, if he is like some of the men in country dis- 
tricts whom I know, he will turn out to have had a good 
deal of thought upon that subject and to be able to make 
some very interesting suggestions whose intelligence and 
comprehensiveness will surprise some city gentlemen 20 
who think that only the cities understand the business of 
the country. As a matter of fact, you do not have time 
to think in a city. It takes time to think. You can get 
what you call opinions by contagion in a city and get 
them very quickly, but you do not always know where the 25 
germ came from. And you have no scientific laboratory 
method by which to determine whether it is a good germ 
or a bad germ. 

There are thinking spaces in this country, and some of 
the thinking done is very solid thinking indeed, the think- 30 
ing of the sort of men that we all love best, who think for 
themselves, who do not see things as they are told to see 
them, but look at them and see them independently; who, 
if they are told they are white when they are black, plainly 



146 Wood row Wilson 

say that they are black — men with eyes and with a courage 
back of those eyes to tell what they see. The country is 
full of those men. They have been singularly reticent 
sometimes, singularly silent, but the country is full of 

5 them. And what I rejoice in is that you have called them 
into the ranks. For your methods are bound to be demo- 
cratic in spite of you. I do not mean democratic with a 
big "D," though I have a private conviction that you 
cannot be democratic with a small "d" long without be- 

10 coming democratic with a big "D." Still that is just be- 
tween ourselves. The point is that when we have a con- 
sensus of opinion, when we have this common counsel, 
then the legislative processes of this Government will be 
infinitely illuminated. 

15 I used to wonder when I v/as Governor of one of the 
States of this great country where all the bills came from. 
Some of them had a very private complexion. I found 
upon inquiry — it was easy to find — that practically nine- 
tenths of the bills that were introduced had been handed 

20 to the members who introduced them by some constituent 
of theirs, had been drawn up by some lawyer whom they 
might or might not know, and were intended to do some- 
thing that would be beneficial to a particular set of per- 
sons. I do not mean, necessarily, beneficial in a way that 

25 would be hurtful to the rest; they may have been perfectly 
honest, but they came out of cubby-holes all over the 
State. .They did not come out of public places where men 
had got together and comipared views. They were not 
the products of common counsel, but the products of 

30 private counsel, a very necessary process if there is no 
other, but a process which it would be a very happy thing 
to dispense with if we could get another. And the only 
other process is the process of common counsel. 

Some of the happiest experiences of my life have been 



Before the U. S. Chamber of Commerce 147 

like this. We had once when I was president of a univer- 
sity to revise the whole course of study.* Courses of 
study are chronically in need of revision. A committee of, 
I believe, fourteen men was directed by the faculty of the 
university to report a revised curriculum. Naturally, the 5 
men who had the most ideas on the subject were picked out 
and, naturally, each man came with a very definite notion 
of the kind of revision he w^anted, and one of the first dis- 
coveries we made was that no two of us wanted exactly the 
same revision. I went in there with all my war paint on to 10 
get the revision I wanted, and I dare say, though it was 
perhaps more skillfully concealed, the other men had their 
war paint on, too. We discussed the matter for six months. 
The result was a report which no one of us had conceived or 
foreseen, but with which we were all absolutely satisfied. 15 
There was not a man who had not learned in that com- 
mittee more than he had ever known before about the 
subject, and who had not willingly revised his preposses- 
sions; Vv^ho was not proud to be a participant in a genuine 
piece of common counsel. I have had several experiences 20 
of that sort, and it has led me, whenever I confer, to hold 
my particular opinion provisionally, as my contribution to 
go into the final result but not to dominate the final result. 
That is the ideal of a government like ours, and an 
interesting thing is that if you only talk about an idea that 25 
will not work long enough, everybody will see perfectly 
plainly that it will not work; whereas, if you do not talk 
about it, and do not have a great many people talk about 
it, you are in danger of having the people who handle it 
think that it will work. Many minds are necessary to com- 30 
pound a workable method of life in a various and populous 
country; and as I think about the whole thing and picture 
the purposes, the infinitely difficult and complex purposes 
* This was at Princeton, in 1902 and 1903. 



148 Wood row Wilson 

which we must conceive and carry out, not only does it 
minister to my own modesty, I hope, of opinion, but it also 
fills me with a very great enthusiasm. It is a splendid 
thing to be part of a great wide-awake Nation. It is a 
5 splendid thing to know that your own strength is infinitely 
multiplied by the strength of other men who love the 
country as you do. It is a splendid thing to feel that the 
wholesome blood of a great country can be united in com- 
mon purposes, and that by frankly looking one another in 

10 the face and taking counsel with one another, prejudices 
will drop away, handsome understandings will arise, a 
universal spirit of service will be engendered, and that with 
this increased sense of community of purpose wdll come a 
vastly enhanced individual power of achievement; for we 

15 wdll be lifted by the whole mass of which we constitute a 
part. 

Have you never heard a great chorus of trained voices 
lift the voice of the prima donna as if it soared with easy 
grace above the whole melodious sound? It does not seem 

20 to come from the single throat that produces it. It seems 
as if it were the perfect accent and crown of the great 
chorus. So it ought to be with the statesman. So it ought 
to be with every man who tries to guide the counsels of a 
great nation. He should feel that his voice is lifted upon 

25 the chorus and that it is only the crown of the common 
theme, . 



TO NATURALIZED CITIZENS 

[Address delivered at Convention Hall, Philadelphia, May lo, 1915. 
The audience included four thousand newly naturalized citizens. 
This speech attracted great attention because in it no reference was 
made to the sinking of the "Lusitania," three days before.] 

Mr. Mayor, Fellow-Citizens: 

It warms my heart that you should give me such a 
reception; but it is not of myself that I wish to think to- 
night, but of those who have just become citizens of the 
United States. ^ 5 

This is the only country in the world which experiences 
this constant and repeated rebirth. Other countries de- 
pend upon the multiplication of their own native people. 
This country is constantly drinking strength out of new 
sources by the voluntary association with it of great 10 
bodies of strong men and forward-looking women out of 
other lands. And so by the gift of the free will of independ- 
ent people it is being constantly renewed from generation 
to generation by the same process by which it was orig- 
inally created. It is as if humanity had determined to 15 
see to it that this great Nation, founded for the benefit of 
humanity, should not lack for the allegiance of the people 
of the world. 

You have just taken an oath of allegiance to the United 
States. Of allegiance to whom? Of allegiance to no one, 20 
unless it be God — certainly not of allegiance to those who 
temporarily represent this great Government. You have 
taken an oath of allegiance to a great ideal, to a great body 
of principles, to a great hope of the human race. You have 
said, " We are going to America not only to earn a Uving, 25 
not only to seek the things which it was more difficult to 

149 



150 Woodrow Wilson 

obtain where we were born, but to help forward the great 
enterprises of the human spirit — to let men know that 
everywhere in the world there are men who will cross 
strange oceans and go where a speech is spoken which is 
5 alien to them if they can but satisfy their quest for what 
their spirits crave; knowing that whatever the speech 
there is but one longing and utterance of the human heart, 
and that is for liberty and justice." And while you bring 
all countries with you, you come with a purpose of leaving 

10 all other countries behind you — ^bringing what is best of 
their spirit, but not looking over your shoulders and seek- 
ing to perpetuate what you intended to leave behind in 
them. I certainly would not be one even to suggest that 
a man cease to love the home of his birth and the nation of 

15 his origin — these things are very sacred and ought not to 
be put out of our hearts — but it is one thing to love the 
place where you were born and it is another thing to 
dedicate yourself to the place to which you go. You can- 
not dedicate yourself to America unless you become in 

20 every respect and with every purpose of your will thorough 
Americans. You cannot become thorough Americans if 
you think of yourselves in groups. America does not con- 
sist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging 
to a particular national group in America has not yet 

25 become an American, and the man who goes among you 
to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live 
under the Stars and Stripes. 

My urgent advice to you would be, not only always to 
think first of America, but always, also, to think first of 

30 humanity. You do not love humanity if you seek to 
divide humanity into jealous camps. Humanity can be 
welded together only by love, by sympathy, by justice, not 
by jealousy and hatred. I am sorry for the man who seeks 
to make personal capital out of the passions of his fellow- 



To Naturalized Citizens 151 

men. He has lost the touch and ideal of America, for 
America was created to unite mankind by those passions 
which lift and not by the passions which separate and 
debase. We came to America, either ourselves or in the 
persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to 5 
make them see finer things than they had seen before, to 
get rid of the things that divide and to make sure of the 
things that unite. It was but an historical accident no 
doubt that this great country was called the "United 
States"; yet I am very thankful that it has that word 10 
''United" in its title, and the man who seeks to divide 
man from man, group from group, interest from interest 
in this great Union is striking at its very heart. 

It is a very interesting circum^stance to me, in thinking 
of those of you who have just sworn allegiance to this great 15 
Government, that you were drawn across the ocean by 
some beckoning finger of hope, by some belief, by some 
vision of a new kind of justice, by some expectation of a 
better kind of life. No doubt you have been disappointed 
in some of us. Some of us are very disappointing. No 20 
doubt you have found that justice in the United States 
goes only with a pure heart and a right purpose as it does 
everywhere else in the world. No doubt what you found 
here did not seem touched for you, after all, with the 
complete beauty of the ideal which you had conceived 25 
beforehand. But remember this: If we had grown at all 
poor in the ideal, you brought some of it with you. A man 
does not go out to seek the thing that is not in him. A man 
does not hope for the thing that he does not believe in, and 
if some of us have forgotten what America believed in, you, 30 
at any rate, imported in your own hearts a renewal of the 
belief. That is the reason that I, for one, make you wel- 
come. If I have in any degree forgotten what America was 
intended for, I will thank God if you will remind me. I 



152 Woodrow Wilson 

was born in America. You dreamed dreams of what 
America was to be, and I hope you brought the dreams with 
you. No man that does not see visions will ever realize 
any high hope or undertake any high enterprise. Just 
5 because you brought dreams with you, America is more 
likely to realize dreams such as you brought. You are en- 
riching us if you came expecting us to be better than we are. 
See, my friends, what that means. It means that 
Americans must have a consciousness different from the 

10 consciousness of every other nation in the world. I am 
not saying this with even the slightest thought of criticism 
of other nations. You know how it is with a family. A 
family gets centered on itself if it is not careful and is less 
interested in the neighbors than it is in its own members. 

15 So a nation that is not constantly renewed out of new 
sources is apt to have the narrowness and prejudice of a 
family; whereas, America must have this consciousness, 
that on all sides it touches elbows and touches hearts 
with all the nations of mankind. The example of America 

20 must be a special example. The example of America 
must be the example not merely of peace because it will 
not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and 
elevating influence of the world and strife is not. There 
is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There 

25 is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not 
need to convince others by force that it is right. 

You have come into this great Nation voluntarily 
seeking something that we have to give, and all that we 
have to give is this: We cannot exempt you from work. 

30 No man is exempt from work anywhere in the world. 
We cannot exempt you from the strife and the heart- 
breaking burden of the struggle of the day — that is com- 
mon to mankind everyw'here; we cannot exempt you from 
the loads that you must carry. We can only make them 



To Naturalized Citizens 153 

light by the spirit in which they are carried. That is the 
spirit of hope, it is the spirit of liberty, it is the spirit of 
justice. 

When I was asked, therefore, by the Mayor and the 
committee that accompanied him to come up from Wash- 5 
ington to meet this great company of newly admitted 
citizens, I could not decline the invitation. I ought not 
to be away from Washington, and yet I feel that it has 
renewed my spirit as an American to be here. In Wash- 
ington men tell you so many things every day that are 10 
not so, and I like to come and stand in the presence of a 
great body of my fellow-citizens, whether they have 
been fellow-citizens a long time or a short time, and drink, 
as it were, out of the common fountains with them and 
go back feeling what you have so generously given me — 15 
the sense of your support and of the living vitality in your 
hearts of the great ideals which have made America the 
hope of the world. 



ADDRESS AT MILWAUKEE 

[Between January 27 and February 3, 1916, President Wilson made 
a series of speeches in New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Milwaukee, 
Chicago, Des Moines, Topeka, Kansas City, and St. Louis. The 
address made at Milwaukee, on January 31, has been chosen as repre- 
senting the general tenor and spirit of the whole series.] 

Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Citizens: 

I need not inquire whether the citizens of Milwaukee 
and Wisconsin are interested in the subject of my errand. 
The presence of this great body in this vast hall sufficiently 

5 attests your interest, but I want at the outset to remove 
a misapprehension that I fear may exist in your mind. 
There is no sudden crisis; nothing new has happened; I 
am not out upon this errand because of any unexpected 
situation. I have come to confer with you upon a matter 

10 upon which it would, in any circumstances, be necessary 
for us to confer when all the rest of the world is on fire and 
our own house is not fireproof. Everywhere the atmos- 
phere of the world is thrilling with the passion of a dis- 
turbance such as the world has never seen before, and it 

15 is wise, in the words just uttered by your chairman, that 
we should see that our own house is set in order and that 
everything is done to make certain that we shall not suffer 
by the general conflagration. 

There were some dangers to which this Nation seemed 

20 at the outset of the war to be exposed, which, I think I can 
say with confidence, are now passed and overcome. 
America has drawn her blood and her strength out of 
almost all the nations of the world. It is true of a great 
many of us that there lies deep in our hearts the recoUec- 

25 tion of an origin which is not American. We are aware 

IS4 



Address at Milwaukee 155 



^ 



that our roots, our traditions, run back into other na- 
tional soils. There are songs that stir us; there are some 
far-away historical recollections which engage our affec- 
tions and stir our memories. We cannot forget our for- 
bears; we cannot altogether ignore the fact of our essential 5 
blood relationship; and at the outset of this war it did 
look as if there were a division of domestic sentiment which 
might lead us to some errors of judgment and some errors 
of action; but I, for one, believe that that danger is passed. 
I never doubted that the danger was exaggerated, because 10 
I had learned long ago, and many of you will corroborate 
me by your experience, that it is not the men who are doing 
the talking always who represent the real sentiments of 
the Nation. I for my part always feel a serene confidence 
in waiting for the declaration of the principles and senti- 15 
ments of the men who are not vociferous, do not go about 
seeking to make trouble, do their own thinking, attend 
to their own business, and love their own country. 

I have at no time supposed that the men whose voices 
seemed to contain the threat of division amongst us were 20 
really uttering the sentiments even of those whom they 
pretended to represent. I for my part have no jealousy 
of family sentiment. I have no jealousy of that deep 
affection which runs back through long lineage. It would 
be a pity if we forget the fine things that our ancestors 25 
have done. But I also know the magic of America; I also 
know the great principles which thrill men in the singular 
body politic to which we belong in the United States. I 
know the impulses which have drawn men to our shores. 
They have not come idly; they have not come without 30 
conscious purpose to be free; they have not come without 
voluntary desire to unite themselves with the great na- 
tion on this side of the sea; and I know that whenever 
the test comes every man's heart will be first for America. 



156 Woodrow Wilson 

It was principle and affection and ambition and hope 
that drew men to these shores, and they are not going to 
forget the errand upon which they came and allow America, 
the home of their refuge and hope, to suffer by any for- 
5 getfulness on their part. And so the trouble makers have 
shot their bolt, and it has been ineffectual. Some of them 
have been vociferous; all of them have been exceedingly 
irresponsible. Talk was cheap, and that was all it cost 
them. They did not have to do anything. But you will 

10 know without my telling you that the man whom for the 
time being you have charged with the duties of President 
of the United States must talk with a deep sense of re- 
sponsibility, and he must remember, above all things else, 
the fine traditions of his office which some men seem to 

15 have forgotten. There is no precedent in American history 
for any action of aggression on the part of the United 
States or for any action which might mean that America 
is seeking to connect herself with the controversies on the 
other side of the water. Men who seek to provoke us to 

20 such action have forgotten the traditions of the United 
States, but it behooves those with whom you have en- 
trusted office to remember the traditions of the United 
States and to see to it that the actions of the Government 
are made to square with those traditions. 

25 But there are other dangers, my fellow-citizens, which 
are not past and which have not been overcome, and they 
are dangers which we cannot control. We can control 
irresponsible talkers amJdst ourselves. All we have got 
to do is to encourage them to hire a hall and their folly 

30 will be abundantly advertised by themselves. But we 
cannot in this simple fashion control the dangers that 
surround us now and have surrounded us since this titanic 
struggle on the other side of the water began. I say on 
the other side of the water; you will ask me, "On the other 



Address at Milwaukee 157 

side of which water," for this great struggle has extended 
to all quarters of the globe. There is no continent out- 
side, I was about to say, of this Western Hemisphere which 
is not touched with it, but I recollected as I began the 
sentence that a part of our own continent was touched with 5 
it, because it involves our neighbors to the north in 
Canada. There is no part of the world, except South 
America, to which the direct influences of this struggle 
have not extended,, so that now we are completely sur- 
rounded by this tremendous disturbance and you must 10 
realize what that involves. 

Our thoughts are concentrated upon our own affairs 
and our own relations to the rest of the world, but the 
thoughts of the men who are engaged in this struggle are 
concentrated upon the struggle itself, and there is daily 15 
and hourly danger that they will feel themselves con- 
strained to do things which are absolutely inconsistent 
with the rights of the United States. They are not think- 
ing of us. I am not criticising them for not thinking of us. 
I dare say if I were in their place neither would I think 20 
of us. They believe that they are struggling for the lives 
and honor of their nations, and that if the United States 
puts its interests in the path of this great struggle, she 
ought to know beforehand that there is danger of very 
serious misunderstanding and diiflculty. So that the very 25 
uncalculating, unpremeditated, one might almost say 
accidental, course of affairs may touch us to the quick at 
any moment, and I want you to realize that, standing in 
the midst of these difficulties, I feel that I am charged with 
a double duty of the utmost difficulty. In the first place, 30 
I know that you are depending upon me to keep this 
Nation out of the war. So far I have done so, and I pledge 
you my word that, God helping me, I will if it is possible. 
But you have laid another duty upon me. You have 



158 Woodrow Wilson 

bidden me to see it that nothing stains or impairs the 
honor of the United States, and that is a matter not within 
my control; that depends upon what others do, not upon 
what the Government of the United States does. There- 
5 fore there may at any moment come a time when I cannot 
preserve both the honor and the peace of the United 
States. Do not exact of me an impossible and contradic- 
tory thing, but stand ready and insistent that everybody 
who represents you should stand ready to provide the 

10 necessary means for maintaining the honor of the United 
States. 
I sometimes think that it is true that no people ever 

. went to war with another people. Governments have 
gone to war with one another. Peoples, so far as I re- 

15 member, have not, and this is a government of the people, 
and this people is not going to choose war. But we are 
not dealing with people; we are dealing with Govern- 
ments. We are dealing with Governments now engaged 
in a great struggle, and therefore we do not know what a 

20 day or an hour will bring forth. All that we know is the 
character of our own duty. We do not want the question 
of peace and war, or the conduct of war, entrusted too 
entirely to our Government. We want war, if it must 
come, to be something that springs out of the sentiments 

25 and principles and actions of the people themselves; and 
it is on that account that I am counseling the Congress of 
the United States not to take the advice of those who 
recommend that we should have, and have very soon, a 
great standing Army, but, on the contrary, to see to it 

30 that the citizens of this country are so trained and that 
the military equipment is so sufficiently provided for 
them that when they choose they can take up arms and 
defend themselves. 

The Constitution of the United States makes the 



Address at Milwaukee 159 

President the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy 
of the Nation, but I do not want a big Army subject to my 
personal command. If danger comes, I want to turn to 
you and the rest of my fellow-countrymen and say, "Men, 
are you ready?" and I know what the response will be. 5 
I know that there will spring up out of the body of the 
Nation a great host of free men, and I want those men not 
to be mere targets for shot and shell. I want them to 
know something of the arms they have in their hands. I 
want them to know something about how to guard against 10 
the diseases that creep into camps, where men are un- 
accustomed to live. I want them to know something of 
what the orders mean that they will be under when they 
enhst under arms for the Government of the United States. 
I want them to be men who can comprehend and easily and 15 
intelligently step into the duty of national defense. That 
is the reason that I am urging upon the Congress of the 
United States at any rate the beginnings of a system by 
which we may give a very considerable body of our fellow- 
citizens the necessary training. 20 

I have not forgotten the great National Guard of this 
country, but in this country of 100,000,000 people there 
are only 129,000 men in the National Guard; and the 
National Guard, fine as it is, is not subject to the orders 
of the President of the United States. It is subject to the 25 
orders of the Governors of the several States, and the 
Constitution itself says that the President has no right to 
withdraw them from their States even, except in the case 
of actual invasion of the soil of the United States. I want 
the Congress of the United States to do a great deal for the 30 
National Guard, but I do not see how the Congress of the 
United States can put the National Guard at the disposal 
of the national authorities. Therefore it seems to me 
absolutely necessary that in addition to the National 



i6o Woodrow Wilson 

Guard there should be a considerable body of men with 
some training in the military art who will have pledged 
themselves to come at the call of the Nation. 

I have been told by those who have a greater knack at 

5 guessing statistics than I have that there are probably 
several million men in the United States who, either in this 
country or in other countries from which they have come 
to the United States, have received training in arms. It 
may be; I do not know, and I suspect that they do not 

lo either, but even if it be true, these men are not subject to 
the call of the Federal Government. They would have to 
be found; they would have to be induced to enhst; they 
would have to be organized; their numbers are indefinite; 
and they would have to be equipped. Such are not the 

15 materials which we need. We want to know who these 
men are and where they are and to have everything ready 
for them if they should come to our assistance. For v/e 
have now got down, not to the sentiment of national de- 
fense, but to the business of national defense. It is a busi- 

20 ness proposition and it must be treated as such. And there 
are abundant precedents for the proposals which have 
been made to the Congress. Even that arch-Democrat, 
Thomas Jefferson, believed that there ought to be com- 
pulsory military training for the adult men of the Nation, 

25 because he believed, as every true believer in democracy 
believes, that it is upon the voluntary action of the men of a 
great Nation like this that it must depend for its mihtary 
force. 

There is another misapprehension that I want to remove 

30 from your minds: Do not think that I have come to talk 
to you about these things because I doubt whether they 
are going to be done or not. I do not doubt it for a mo- 
ment, but I believe that when great things of this sort are 
going to be done the people of this country are entitled to 



Address at Milwaukee i6i 

know just what is being proposed. As a friend of mine 
says, T am not arguing with you; I am telling you. I am 
not trying to convert you to anything, because I know that 
in your hearts you are converted already, but I want you 
to know the motives of what is proposed and the character 5 
of what is proposed, in order that we should have only one 
attitude and counsel with regard to this great matter. 

It is being very sedulously spread abroad in this country 
that the impulse back of all this is the desire of men who 
make the materials of warfare to get money out of the 10 
Treasury of the United States. I wish the people that say 
that could see meetings hke this. Did you come here for 
that purpose? Did you come here because you are in- 
terested to see some of your fellow-citizens make money 
out of the present situation? Of course you did not. I am 15 
ready to admit that probably the equipment of those men 
whom we are training will have to be bought from some- 
body, and I know that if the equipment is bought, it will 
have to be paid for; and I dare say somebody will make 
some money out of it. It is also true, ladies and gentle- 20 
men, that there are men now, a great many men, in the 
belligerent countries who are growing rich out of the sale 
of the materials needed by the armies of those countries. 
If the Government itself does not manufacture everything 
that an army needs, somebody has got to make money out 25 
of it, and I for my part have been urging the Congress of 
the United States to make the necessary preparations by 
which the Government can manufacture armor plate and 
munitions, so that, being in the business itself and having 
the ability to manufacture all it needs, if it is put upon a 30 
business basis, it can at any rate keep the price that it 
pays within moderate and reasonable limits. The Govern- 
ment of the United States is not going to be imposed upon 
by anybody, and you may rest assured, therefore, that 



1 62 Woodrow Wilson 

while I believe you prefer that private capital and private 
initiative should bestir themselves in these matters, it is 
also possible, and I assure you that it is most likely, that 
the Government of the United States will have adequate 

5 means of controlling this matter very thoroughly indeed. 
There need be no fear on that side. Let nobody suppose 
that this is a money-making agitation. I would for one be 
ashamed to be such a dupe as to be engaged in it if it had 
any suspicion of that about it, but I am not as innocent as 

lo I look; and I believe that I can say for my colleagues in 
Washington that they are just as watchful in such matters 
as you would desire them to be. 

And there is another misapprehension that I do not wish 
you to entertain. Do not suppose that there is any new or 

15 sudden or recent inadequacy on the part of this Govern- 
ment in respect of preparation for national defense. I 
have heard some gentlemen say that we had no coast 
defenses worth talking about. Coast defenses are not 
nowadays advertised, you understand, and they are not 

20 visible to the naked eye, so that if you passed them and 
nothing exploded, you would not know they were there. 
The coast defenses of the United States, while not nu- 
merous enough, are equipped in the most modern and 
efficient fashion. You are told that there has been some 

25 sort of neglect about the Navy. There has not been any 
sort of neglect about the Nav>\ We have been slowly 
building up a Navy which in quality is second to no navy 
in the world. The only thing it lacks is quantity. In size 
it is the fourth navy in the world, though I have heard it 

30 said by some gentlemen in this very region that it was the 
second. In fighting force, though not in quality, it is 
reckoned by experts to be the fourth in rank in the world; 
and yet when I go on board those ships and see their 
equipment and talk with their officers I suspect that they 



Address at Milwaukee 163 

could give an account of themselves which would raise 
them above the fourth class. It reminds me of that very- 
quaint saying of the old darky preacher, "The Lord says 
unto Moses, come fourth, and he came fifth and lost the 
race." But I think this Navy would not come fourth in 5 
the race, but higher. 

What we are proposing now is not the sudden creation of 
a Navy, for we have a splendid Navy, but the definite 
working out of a program by which within five years we 
shall bring the Navy to a fighting strength which otherwise 10 
might have taken eight or ten years; along exactly the 
same lines of development that have been followed and 
followed diligently and intelligently for at least a decade 
past. There is no sudden panic, there is no sudden change 
of plan; all that has happened is that we now see that we 15 
ought more rapidly and more thoroughly than ever before 
to do the things w^hich have always been characteristic of 
America. For she has always been proud of her Navy and 
has always been addicted to the principle that her citizen- 
ship must do the fighting on land. We are working out 20 
American principle a little faster, because American pulses 
are beating a little faster, because the world is in a whirl, 
because there are incalculable elements of trouble abroad 
which we cannot control or alter. I would be derelict to 
the duty which you have laid upon me if I did not tell you 25 
that it was absolutely necessary to carry out our principles 
in this matter now and at once. 

And yet all the time, my fellow-citizens, I believe that 
in these things we are merely interpreting the spirit of 
America. Who shall say what the spirit of America is? 30 
I have many times heard orators apostrophize this beauti- 
ful flag which is the emblem of the Nation. I have many 
times heard orators and philosophers speak of the spirit 
which was resident in America. I have always for my own 



164 Woodrow Wilson 

part felt that it was an act of audacity to attempt to char- 
acterize anything of that kind, and when I have been out- 
side of the country in foreign lands and have been asked if 
this, that, or the other was true of America I have habit- 

5 ually said, "Nothing stated in general terms is true of 
America, because it is the most variegated and varied and 
multiform land under the sun." Yet I know that if you 
turn away from the physical aspects of the country, if you 
turn away from the variety of the strains of blood that 

10 make up our great population, if you turn away from the 
great variations of occupation and of interest among our 
fellow-citizens, there is a spiritual unity in America. I 
know that there are some things which stir every heart in 
America, no matter what the racial derivation or the local 

15 environment, and one of the things that stirs every 
American is the love of individual Hberty. We do not 
stand for occupations. We do not stand for material 
interests. We do not stand for any narrow conception 
even of political institutions; but we do stand for this, that 

20 we are banded together in America to see to it that no man 
shall serve any master who is not of his own choosing. And 
we have been very Hberal and generous about this idea. 
We have seen great peoples, for the most part not of the 
same blood with ourselves, to the south of us build up 

25 pohties in which this same idea pulsed and was regnant, 
this idea of free institutions and individual liberty, and 
when we have seen hands reached across the water from 
older poUtical pohties to interfere with the development 
of free institutions on the Western Hemisphere we have 

30 said: "No; we are the champions of the freedom of popular 
sovereignty wherever it displays or exercises itself through- 
out both Americas." We are the champions of a particular 
sort of freedom, the sort of freedom which is the only 
foundation and guarantee of peace. 



Address at Milwaukee 165 

Peace lies in the hearts of great industrial and agricul- 
tural populations, and we have arranged a government on 
this side of the water by which their preferences and their 
predilections and their interests are the mainsprings of 
government itself. And so when we prepare for national 5 
defense we prepare for national political integrity; we 
prepare to take care of the great ideals which gave birth 
to this Government; we are going back in spirit and in 
energy to those great first generations in America, when 
men banded themselves together, though they were but a 10 
handful upon a single coast of the Atlantic, to set up in the 
world the standards which have ever since floated every- 
where that Americans asserted the power of their Govern- 
ment. As I came along the line of the railway to-day, I 
was touched to observe that everywhere, upon every 15 
railway station, upon every house, where a flag could be 
procured, some temporary standard had been raised from 
which there floated the stars and stripes. They seemed to 
have divined the errand upon which I had come, to remind 
you that we must subordinate every individual interest 20 
and every local interest to assert once more, if it should be 
necessary to assert them, the great principles for which 
that flag stands. 

Do not deceive yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, as to 
where the colors of that flag came from. Those lines of red 25 
are lines of blood, nobly and unsehishly shed by men who 
loved the liberty of their fellow-men more than they loved 
their own lives and fortunes. God forbid that we should 
have to use the blood of America to freshen the color of that 
flag; but if it should ever be necessary again to assert the 30 
majesty and integrity of those ancient and honorable 
principles, that flag will be colored once more, and in 
being colored will be glorified and purified. 



THE SUBMARINE QUESTION 

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, 
April 19, 19 16.] 

Gentlemen of the Congress: 

A situation has arisen in the foreign relations of the 
country of which it is my plain duty to inform you very 
frankly. 

5 It will be recalled that in February, 1Q15, the Imperial 
German Government announced its intention to treat 
the waters surrounding Great Britain and Ireland as em- 
braced within the seat of war and to destroy all merchant 
ships owned by its enemies that might be found within 

10 any part of that portion of the high seas, and that it warned 
all vessels, of neutral as well as of belligerent ownership, 
to keep out of the waters it had thus proscribed or else 
enter them at their peril. The Government of the United 
States earnestly protested. It took the position that 

15 such a policy could not be pursued without the practical 
certainty of gross and palpable violations of the law of 
nations, particularly if submarine craft were to be em- 
ployed as its instruments, inasmuch as the rules prescribed 
by that law, rules founded upon principles of humanity 

20 and established for the protection of the lives of non- 
combatants at sea, could not in the nature of the case be 
observed by such vessels. It based its protest on the 
ground that persons of neutral nationality and vessels of 
neutral ownership would be exposed to extreme and in- 

25 tolerable risks, and that no right to close any part of the 
high seas against their use or to expose them to such risks 
could lawfully be asserted by any belligerent government. 

166 



The Submarine Question 167 

The law of nations in these matters, upon which the Gov- 
ernment of the United States based its protest, is not of 
recent origin or founded upon merely arbitrary principles 
set up by convention. It is based, on the contrary, upon 
manifest and imperative principles of humanity and has 5 
long been established with the approval and by the ex- 
press assent of all civilized nations. 

Notwithstanding the earnest protest of our Govern- 
ment, the Imperial German Government at once pro- 
ceeded to carry out the policy it had announced. It 10 
expressed the hope that the dangers involved, at any rate 
the dangers to neutral vessels, would be reduced to a 
minimum by the instructions which it had issued to its 
submarine commanders, and assured the Government of 
the United States that it would take every possible pre- 15 
caution both to respect the rights of neutrals and to safe- 
guard the lives of non-combatants. 

What has actually happened in the year which has 
since elapsed has shown that those hopes were not justi- 
fied, those assurances insusceptible of being fulfilled. In 20 
pursuance of the policy of submarine warfare against the 
commerce of its adversaries, thus announced and entered 
upon by the Imperial German Government in despite of 
the solemn protest of this Government, the commanders 
of German undersea vessels have attacked merchant ships 25 
with greater and greater activity, not only upon the high 
seas surrounding Great Britain and Ireland but wherever 
they could encounter them, in a way that has grown more 
and more ruthless, more and more indiscriminate as the 
months have gone by, less and less observant of restraints 30 
of any kind; and have delivered their attacks without 
compunction against vessels of every nationality and 
bound upon every sort of errand. Vessels of neutral 
ownership, even vessels of neutral ownership bound from 



1 68 Wood row Wilson 

neutral port to neutral port, have been destroyed along 
with vessels of belligerent ownership in constantly increas- 
ing numbers. Sometimes the merchantman attacked has 
been warned and summoned to surrender before being 
5 fired on or torpedoed; sometimes passengers or crews have 
been vouchsafed the poor security of being allowed to 
take to the ship's boats before she was sent to the bottom. 
But again and again no warning has been given, no escape 
even to the ship's boats allowed to those on board. What 

lo this Government foresaw must happen has happened. 
Tragedy has followed tragedy on the seas in such fashion, 
with such attendant circumstances, as to make it grossly 
evident that warfare of such a sort, if warfare it be, cannot 
be carried on without the most palpable violation of the 

15 dictates alike of right and of humanity. Whatever the 
disposition and intention of the Imperial German Gov- 
ernment, it has manifestly proved impossible for it to 
keep such methods of attack upon the commerce of its 
enemies wdthin the bounds set by either the reason or the 

20 heart of mankind. 

In February of the present year the Imperial German 
Government informed this Government and the other 
neutral governments of the world that it had reason to 
believe that the Government of Great Britain had armed 

25 all merchant vessels of British owTiership and had given 
them secret orders to attack any submarine of the enemy 
they might encounter upon the seas, and that the Imperial 
German Government felt justified in the circumstances in 
treating all armed merchantmen of belligerent o\\iiership 

30 as auxiliary vessels of war, which it would have the right 
to destroy without warning. The law of nations has long 
recognized the right of merchantmen to carry arms for 
protection and to use them to repel attack, though to 
use them, in such circumstances, at their own risk; but the 



The Submarine Question 169 

Imperial German Government claimed the right to set 
these understandings aside in circumstances which it 
deemed extraordinary. Even the terms in which it an- 
nounced its purpose thus still further to relax the restraints 
it had previously professed its willingness and desire to 5 
put upon the operations of its submarines carried the plain 
implication that at least vessels which were not armed 
would still be exempt from destruction without warning 
and that personal safety would be accorded their passen- 
gers and crews; but even that limitation, if it w^as ever 10 
practicable to observe it, has in fact constituted no check 
at all upon the destruction of ships of every sort. 

Again and again the Imperial German Government 
has given this Government its solemn assurances that at 
least passenger ships would not be thus dealt with, and 15 
yet it has again and again permitted its undersea com- 
manders to disregard those assurances with entire im- 
punity. Great liners like the Lusitania and the Arabic 
and mere ferryboats like the Sussex have been attacked 
without a moment's warning, sometimes before they had 20 
even become aware that they were in the presence of an 
armed vessel of the enemy, and the lives of non-combat- 
ants, passengers and crew, have been sacrificed wholesale, 
in a manner which the Government of the United States 
cannot but regard as wanton and without the slightest 25 
color of justification. No limit of any kind has in fact 
been set to the indiscriminate pursuit and destruction of 
merchantmen of all kinds and nationalities within the 
waters, constantly extending in area, where these opera- 
tions have been carried on; and the roll of Americans 30 
who have lost their lives on ships thus attacked and de- 
stroyed has grown month by month until the ominous 
toll has mounted into the hundreds. 

One of the latest and most shocking instances of this 



170 Woodrow Wilson 

method of warfare was that of the destruction of the 
French cross-Channel steamer Sussex. It must stand 
forth, as the sinking of the steamer Lusitania did, as so 
singularly tragical and unjustifiable as to constitute a 
5 truly terrible example of the inhumanity of submarine 
w^arfare as the commanders of German vessels have for 
the past twelvemonth been conducting it. If this instance 
stood alone, some explanation, some disavowal by the 
German Government, some evidence of criminal mistake 

10 or wilful disobedience on the part of the commander of the 
vessel that fired the torpedo might be sought or enter- 
tained; but unhappily it does not stand alone. Recent 
events make the conclusion inevitable that it is only one 
instance, even though it be one of the most extreme and 

15 distressing instances, of the spirit and method of warfare 
which the Imperial German Government has mistakenly 
adopted, and which from the first exposed that Govern- 
ment to the reproach of thrusting all neutral rights aside 
in pursuit of its immediate objects. 

20 The Government of the United States has been very 
patient. At every stage of this distressing experience of 
tragedy after tragedy in which its own citizens were in- 
volved it has sought to be restrained from any extreme 
course of action or of protest by a thoughtful considera- 

25 tion of the extraordinary circumstances of this unprec- 
edented war, and actuated in all that it said or did by 
the sentiments of genuine friendship which the people of 
the United States have always entertained and continue 
to entertain towards the German nation. It has of course 

30 accepted the successive explanations and assurances of 
the Imperial German Government as given in entire sin- 
cerity and good faith, and has hoped, even against hope, 
that it would prove to be possible for the German Govern- 
ment so to order and control the acts of its naval com- 



The Submarine Question 171 

manders as to square its policy with the principles of hu- 
manity as embodied in the law of nations. It has been 
willing to wait until the significance of the facts became 
absolutely unmistakable and susceptible of but one in- 
terpretation. 5 

That point has now unhappily been reached. The facts 
are susceptible of but one interpretation. The Imperial 
German Government has been unable to put any limits 
or restraints upon its warfare against either freight or 
passenger ships. It has therefore become painfully evi- 10 
dent that the position which this Government took at the 
very outset is inevitable, namely, that the use of sub- 
marines for the destruction of an enemy's commerce is of 
necessity, because of the very character of the vessels 
employed and the very methods of attack which their 15 
employment of course involves, incompatible with the 
principles of humanity, the long established and incon- 
trovertible rights of neutrals, and the sacred immunities 
of non-combatants. 

I have deemed it my duty, therefore, to say to the Im- 20 
perial German Government that if it is still its purpose 
to prosecute relentless and indiscriminate warfare against 
vessels of commerce by the use of submarines, notwith- 
standing the now demonstrated impossibility of conduct- 
ing that warfare in accordance with what the Government 25 
of the United States must consider the sacred and indis- 
putable rules of international law and the universally 
recognized dictates of humanity, the Government of the 
United States is at last forced to the conclusion that 
there is but one course it can pursue; and that unless the 30 
Imperial German Government should now immediately 
declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods 
of warfare against passenger and freight carrying vessels 
this Government can have no choice but to sever diplo- 



172 Woodrow Wilson 

matic relations with the Government of the German 
Empire altogether. 

This decision I have arrived at with the keenest regret; 
the possibility of the action contemplated I am sure all 

5 thoughtful Americans will look forward to with unaffected 
reluctance. But we cannot forget that we are in some 
sort and by the force of circumstances the responsible 
spokesmen of the rights of humanity, and that we cannot 
remain silent while those rights seem in process of being 

10 swept utterly aw^ay in the maelstrom of this terrible war. 
We owe it to a due regard for our own rights as a nation, 
to our sense of duty as a representative of the rights of 
neutrals the world over, and to a just conception of the 
rights of mankind to take this stand now with the utmost 

15 solemnity and firmness. 

I have taken it, and taken it in the confidence that it 
will meet with your appro\^al and support. All sober- 
minded men must unite in hoping that the Imperial 
German Government, w^hich has in other circumstances 

20 stood as the champion of all that we are now contending 
for in the interest of humanity, may recognize the justice 
of our demands and meet them in the spirit in which they 
are made. 



AMERICAN PRINCIPLES 

[Address delivered at the First Annual Assemblage of the League 
to Enforce Peace, May 27, 19 16. J 

When the invitation to be here to-night came to me, I 
was glad to accept it, — not because it ofTered me an oppor- 
tunity to discuss the program of the League, — that you 
will, I am sure, not expect of me, — but because the desire 
of the whole world now turns eagerly, more and more 5 
eagerly, towards the hope of peace, and there is just reason 
why we should take our part in counsel upon this great 
theme. It is right that I, as spokesman of our Govern- 
ment, should attempt to give expression to what I believe 
to be the thought and purpose of the people of the United 10 
States in this vital matter. 

This great war that broke so suddenly upon the world 
two years ago, and which has swTpt wdthin its flame so 
great a part of the civilized world, has affected us very 
profoundly, and we are not only at liberty, it is perhaps 15 
our duty, to speak very frankly of it and of the great 
interests of civilization which it affects. 

With its causes and its objects we are not concerned. 
The obscure fountains from w^hich its stupendous flood 
has burst forth we are not interested to search for or ex- 20 
plore. But so great a flood, spread far and wide to every 
quarter of the globe, has of necessity engulfed many a 
fair province of right that lies very near to us. Our own 
rights as a Nation, the liberties, the privileges, and the 
property of our people have been profoundly affected. We 25 
are not mere disconnected lookers-on. The longer the 
war lasts, the more deeply do we become concerned that 

173 



174 Woodrow Wilson 

it should be brought to an end and the world be permitted 
to resume its normal life and course again. And when it 
does come to an end we shall be as much concerned as the 
nations at war to see peace assume an aspect of per- 

5 manence, give promise of days from which the anxiety of 
uncertainty shall be Hfted, bring some assurance that peace 
and war shall always hereafter be reckoned part of the 
common interest of mankind. We are participants, 
whether w^e would or not, in the life of the world. The 

lo interests of all nations are our own also. We are partners 

with the rest. What affects mankind is inevitably our affair 

as well as the affair of the nations of Europe and of Asia. 

One observation on the causes of the present war we 

are at liberty to make, and to make it may throw some 

15 light forward upon the future, as well as backward upon 
the past. It is plain that this war could have come only 
as it did, suddenly and out of secret counsels, without 
warning to the world, without discussion, without any of 
the deliberate movements of counsel with which it would 

20 seem natural to approach so stupendous a contest. It is 
probable that if it had been foreseen just what would hap- 
pen, just what alliances would be formed, just what forces 
arrayed against one another, those who brought the great 
contest on would have been glad to substitute conference 

25 for force. If we ourselves had been afforded some oppor- 
tunity to apprise the belligerents of the attitude which it 
would be our duty to take, of the policies and practices 
against which we would feel bound to use all our moral 
and economic strength, and in certain circumstances even 

30 our physical strength also, our own contribution to the 
counsel which might have averted the struggle would have 
been considered worth weighing and regarding. 

And the lesson which the shock of being taken by sur- 
prise in a matter so deeply vital to all the nations of the 



American Principles 175 

world has made poignantly clear is, that the peace of the 
world must henceforth depend upon a new and more 
wholesome diplomacy. Only when the great nations of the 
world have reached some sort of agreement as to what 
they hold to be fundamental to their common interest, 5 
and as to some feasible method of acting in concert when 
any nation or group of nations seeks to disturb those 
fundamental things, can we feel that civilization is at 
last in a way of justifying its existence and claiming to be 
finally established. It is clear that nations must in the 10 
future be governed by the same high code of honor that 
we demand of individuals. 

We must, indeed, in the very same breath with which we 
avow this conviction admit that we have ourselves upon 
occasion in the past been offenders against the law of 15 
diplomacy which we thus forecast; but our conviction is 
not the less clear, but rather the more clear, on that ac- 
count. If this war has accomplished nothing else for the 
benefit of the world, it has at least disclosed a great moral 
necessity and set forward the thinking of the statesmen of 20 
the world by a whole age. Repeated utterances of the 
leading statesmen of most of the great nations now en- 
gaged in war have made it plain that their thought has 
come to this, that the principle of public right must hence- 
forth take precedence over the individual interests of 25 
particular nations, and that the nations of the world must 
in some way band themselves together to see that that 
right prevails as against any sort of selfish aggression ; that 
henceforth alliance must not be set up against alliance, 
understanding against understanding, but that there 30 
must be a common agreement for a common object, and 
that at the heart of that common object must lie the 
inviolable rights of peoples and of mankind. The nations 
of the world have become each other's neighbors. It is 



176 Woodrow Wilson 

to their interest that they should understand each other. 
In order that they may understand each other, it is 
imperative that they should agree to cooperate in a com- 
mon cause, and that they should so act that the guiding 

5 principle of that common cause shall be even-handed and 
impartial justice. 

This is undoubtedly the thought of America. This is 
what we ourselves will say when there comes proper occa- 
sion to say it. In the dealings of nations with one another 

10 arbitrary force must be rejected and we must move for- 
ward to the thought of the modern world, the thought of 
which peace is the very atmosphere. That thought consti- 
tutes a chief part of the passionate conviction of America. 
We believe these fundamental things: First, that every 

15 people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which 
they shall live. Like other nations, we have ourselves no 
doubt once and again offended against that principle when 
for a little while controlled by selfish passion, as our franker 
historians have been honorable enough to admit; but it 

20 has become more and more our rule of hfe and action. 
Second, that the small states of the world have a right to 
enjoy the same respect for their sovereignty and for their 
territorial integrity that great and powerful nations expect 
and insist upon. And, third, that the world has a right to 

25 be free from every disturbance of its peace that has its 
origin in aggression and disregard of the rights of peoples 
and nations. 

So sincerely do we believe in these things that I am sure 
that I speak the mind and wish of the people of America 

30 when I say that the United States is willing to become a 
partner in any feasible association of nations formed in 
order to realize these objects and make them secure 
against violation. 

There is nothing that the United States wants for itself 



American Principles 177 

that any other nation has. We are wilHng, on the con- 
trary, to Hmit ourselves along with them to a prescribed 
course of duty and respect for the rights of others which 
will check any selfish passion of our own, as it will check 
any aggressive impulse of theirs. 5 

If it should ever be our privilege to suggest or initiate a 
movement for peace among the nations now at war, I am 
sure that the people of the United States would wish their 
Government to move along these lines: First, such a 
settlement with regard to their own immediate interests 10 
as the belligerents may agree upon. We have nothing 
material of any kind to ask for ourselves, and are quite 
aware that we are in no sense or degree parties to the 
present quarrel. Our interest is only in peace and its 
future guarantees. Second, an universal association of the 15 
nations to maintain the inviolate security of the highway 
of the seas for the common and unhindered use of all the 
nations of the w^orld, and to prevent any war begun either 
contrary to treaty covenants or without warning and full 
submission of the causes to the opinion of the world, — a 20 
virtual guarantee of territorial integrity and political 
independence. 

But I did not come here, let me repeat, to discuss a 
program. I came only to avow a creed and give ex- 
pression to the confidence I feel that the world is even 25 
now upon the eve of a great consummation, when some 
common force will be brought into existence which shall 
safeguard right as the first and most fundamental interest 
of all peoples and all governments, when coercion shall be 
summoned not to the service of political ambition or 30 
selfish hostility, but to the service of a common order, a 
common justice, and a common peace. God grant that the 
dawn of that day of frank dealing and of settled peace, 
concord, and cooperation may be near at hand! 



THE DEMANDS OF RAILWAY EMPLOYEES 

[y\ddress delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, 
August 29, 1916.] 

Gentlemen of the Congress: 

I have come to you to seek your assistance in dealing 
with a very grave situation which has arisen out of the 
demand of the employees of the railroads engaged in 

5 freight train service that they be granted an eight-hour 
working day, safeguarded by payment for an hour and a 
half of service for every hour of work beyond the eight. 

The matter has been agitated for more than a year. The 
public has been made familiar with the demands of the 

10 men and the arguments urged in favor of them, and even 
more familiar with the objections of the railroads and 
their counter demand that certain privileges now enjoyed 
by their men and certain bases of payment worked out 
through many years of contest be reconsidered, especially 

15 in their relation to the adoption of an eight-hour day. 
The matter came some three weeks ago to a final issue and 
resulted in a complete deadlock between the parties. 
The means provided by law for the mediation of the con- 
troversy failed and the means of arbitration for which the 

20 law provides were rejected. The representatives of the 
railway executives proposed that the demands of the 
men be submitted in their entirety to arbitration, along 
with certain questions of readjustment as to pay and con- 
ditions of employment which seemed to them to be either 

25 closely associated with the demands or to call for recon- 
sideration on their own merits; the men absolutely de- 
clined arbitration, especially if any of their established 

178 . 



The Demands of Railway Employees 179 

privileges were by that means to be drawn again in ques- 
tion. The law in the matter put no compulsion upon 
them. The four hundred thousand men from whom the 
demands proceeded had voted to strike if their demands 
were refused; the strike was imminent; it has since been 5 
set for the fourth of September next. It affects the men 
who man the freight trains on practically every railway 
in the country. The freight service throughout the United 
States must stand still until their places are filled, if, 
indeed, it should prove possible to fill them at all. Cities 10 
will be cut off from their food supplies, the whole com- 
merce of the nation will be paralyzed, men of every sort 
and occupation will be thrown out of employment, count- 
less thousands will in all likelihood be brought, it may be, 
to the very point of starvation, and a tragical national 15 
calamity brought on, to be added to the other distresses 
of the time, because no basis of accommodation or settle- 
ment has been found. 

Just so soon as it became evident that mediation under 
the existing law had failed and that arbitration had been 20 
rendered impossible by the attitude of the men, I con- 
sidered it my duty to confer with the representatives of 
both the railways and the brotherhoods, and myself offer 
mediation, not as an arbitrator, but merely as spokesman 
of the nation, in the interest of justice, indeed, and as a 25 
friend of both parties, but not as judge, only as the repre- 
sentative of one hundred millions of men, women, and 
children who would pay the price, the incalculable price, 
of loss and suffering should these few men insist upon ap- 
proaching and concluding the matters in controversy 30 
between them merely as employers and employees, rather 
than as patriotic citizens of the United States looking 
before and after and accepting the larger responsibility 
which the public would put upon them. 



i8o Woodrow Wilson 

It seemed to me, in considering the subject-matter of 
the controversy, that the whole spirit of the time and the 
preponderant evidence of recent economic experience 
spoke for the eight-hour day. It has been adjudged by 
5 the thought and experience of recent years a thing upon 
which society is justified in insisting as in the interest of 
health, eflSciency, contentment, and a general increase of 
economic vigor. The whole presumption of modern ex- 
perience would, it seemed to me, be in its favor, whether 

lo there was arbitration or not, and the debatable points to 
settle were those which arose out of the acceptance of the 
eight-hour day rather than those which aft'ected its estab- 
lishment. I, therefore, proposed that the eight-hour day 
be adopted by the railway managements and put into 

15 practice for the present as a substitute for the existing 
ten-hour basis of pay and service; that I should appoint, 
with the permission of the Congress, a small commission 
to observe the results of the change, carefully studying 
the figures of the altered operating costs, not only, but 

20 also the conditions of labor under which the men worked 
and the operation of their existing agreements with the 
railroads, with instructions to report the facts as they 
found them to the Congress at the earliest possible day, 
but without recommendation; and that, after the facts 

25 had been thus disclosed, an adjustment should in some 

orderly manner be sought of all the matters now left 

unadjusted between the railroad managers and the men. 

These proposals were exactly in line, it is interesting to 

note, with the position taken by the Supreme Court of 

30 the United States when appealed to to protect certain 
litigants from the financial losses which they confidently 
expected if they should submit to the regulation of their 
charges and of their methods of service by public legisla- 
tion. The Court has held that it would not undertake to 



The Demands of Railway Employees i8i 

form a judgment upon forecasts, but could base its action 
only upon actual experience; that it must be supplied with 
facts, not with calculations and opinions, however scien- 
tifically attempted. To undertake to arbitrate the ques- 
tion of the adoption of an eight-hour day in the light of 5 
results merely estimated and predicted would be to under- 
take an enterprise of conjecture. No wise man could 
undertake it, or, if he did undertake it, could feel assured 
of his conclusions. 

I unhesitatingly offered the friendly services of the ad- 10 
ministration to the railway managers to see to it that 
justice was done the railroads in the outcome. I felt 
warranted in assuring them that no obstacle of law would 
be suffered to stand in the way of their increasing their 
revenues to meet the expenses resulting from the change 15 
so far as the development of their business and of their 
administrative efficiency did not prove adequate to meet 
them. The public and the representatives of the public, 
I felt justified in assuring them, were disposed to nothing 
but justice in such cases and were willing to serve those 20 
who served them. 

The representatives of the brotherhoods accepted the 
plan; but the representatives of the railroads declined to 
accept it. In the face of what I cannot but regard as the 
practical certainty that they will be ultimately obliged to 25 
accept the eight-hour day by the concerted action of or- 
ganized labor, backed by the favorable judgment of so- 
ciety, the representatives of the railway management 
have felt justified in declining a peaceful settlement which 
would engage all the forces of justice, public and private, 30 
on their side to take care of the event. They fear the 
hostile influence of shippers, who would be opposed to an 
increase of freight rates (for which, however, of course, 
the public itself would pay) ; they apparently feel no con- 



1 82 Wood row Wilson 

fidence that the Interstate Commerce Commission could 
withstand the objections that would be made. They do 
not care to rely upon the friendly assurances of the Con- 
gress or the President. They have thought it best that 
5 they should be forced to yield, if they must yield, not by 
counsel, but by the suffering of the country. WTiile my ' 
conferences with them were in progress, and when to all 
outward appearance those conferences had come to a 
standstill, the representatives of the brotherhoods sud- 

lo denly acted and set the strike for the fourth of Sep- 
tember. 

The railway managers based their decision to reject my 
counsel in this matter upon their conviction that they 
must at any cost to themselves or to the country stand 

15 firm for the principle of arbitration which the men had 
rejected. I based my counsel upon the indisputable fact 
that there was no means of obtaining arbitration. The 
law supplied none; earnest efforts at mediation had failed 
to influence the men in the least. To stand firm for the 

20 principle of arbitration and yet not get arbitration seemed 
to me futile, and something more than futile, because it 
involved incalculable distress to the country and conse- 
quences in some respects worse than those of war, and 
that in the midst of peace. 

25 I yield to no man in firm adherence, alike of conviction 
and of purpose, to the principle of arbitration in industrial 
disputes; but matters have come to a sudden crisis in 
this particular dispute and the country had been caught 
unprovided with any practicable means of enforcing that 

30 conviction in practice (by whose fault we will not now 
stop to inquire). A situation had to be met whose ele- 
ments and fixed conditions were indisputable. The prac- 
tical and patriotic course to pursue, as it seemed to me, 
was to secure immediate peace by conceding the one thing 



The Demands of Railway Employees 183 

in the demands of the men which society itself and any 
arbitrators who represented pubhc sentiment were most 
Hkely to approve, and immediately lay the foundations 
for securing arbitration with regard to everything else in- 
volved. The event has confirmed that judgment. 5 

I was seeking to compose the present in order to safe- 
guard the future; for I wished an atmosphere of peace and 
friendly cooperation in which to take counsel with the 
representatives of the nation with regard to the best 
means for providing, so far as it might prove possible to 10 
provide, against the recurrence of such unhappy situa- 
tions in the future, — the best and most practicable means 
of securing calm and fair arbitration of all industrial dis- 
putes in the days to come. This is assuredly the best way 
of vindicating a principle, namely, having failed to make 15 
certain of its observance in the present, to make certain 
of its observance in the future. 

But I could only propose. I could not govern the will 
of others who took an entirely different view of the cir- 
cumstances of the case, who even refused to admit the 20 
circumstances to be what they have turned out to be. 

Having failed to bring the parties to this critical con- 
troversy to an accommodation, therefore, I turn to you, 
deeming it clearly our duty as public servants to leave 
nothing undone that we can do to safeguard the life and 25 
interests of the nation. In the spirit of such a purpose, 
I earnestly recommend the following legislation: 

First, immediate provision for the enlargement and ad- 
ministrative reorganization of the Interstate Commerce 
Commission along the lines embodied in the bill recently 30 
passed by the House of Representatives and now awaiting 
action by the Senate; in order that the Commission may 
be enabled to deal with the many great and various duties 
now devolving upon it with a promptness and thorough- 



184 Woodrow Wilson 

ness which are with its present constitution and means of 
action practically impossible. 

Second, the estabUshment of an eight-hour day as the 
legal basis alike of work and of wages in the employment of 
5 all railway employees who are actually engaged in the 
work of operating trains in interstate transportation. 

Third, the authorization of the appointment by the 
President of a small body of men to obsers'e the actual 
results in experience of the adoption of the eight-hour day 

10 in railway transportation alike for the men and for the rail- 
roads; its effects in the matter of operating costs, in the 
application of the existing practices and agreements to the 
new conditions, and in all other practical aspects, with the 
provision that the investigators shall report their conclu- 

15 sions to the Congress at the earhest possible date, but 
without recommendation as to legislative action; in order 
that the public may learn from an unprejudiced source just 
what actual developments have ensued. 

Fourth, explicit approval by the Congress of the con- 

20 sideration by the Interstate Commerce Commission of an 
increase of freight rates to meet such additional expendi- 
tures by the railroads as may have been rendered necessary 
by the adoption of the eight-hour day and which have not 
been offset by administrative readjustments and econ- 

25 omies, should the facts disclosed justify the increase. 

Fifth, an amendment of the existing federal statute 
which provides for the mediation, conciliation, and arbi- 
tration of such controversies as the present by adding to 
it a provision that in case the methods of accommodation 

30 now provided for should fail, a full public investigation of 
the merits of every such dispute shall be instituted and 
completed before a strike or lockout may lawfully be at- 
tempted. 
And, sixth, the lodgment in the hands of the Executive 



The Demands of Railway Employees 185 

of the power, in case of military necessity, to take control 
of such portions and such rolling stock of the railways of 
the country as may be required for military use and to 
operate them for military purposes, with authority to 
draft into the military service of the United States such 5 
train crews and administrative officials as the circum- 
stances require for their safe and efficient use. 

This last suggestion I make because we cannot in any 
circumstances suffer the nation to be hampered in the 
essential matter of national defense. At the present 10 
moment circumstances render this duty particularly 
obvious. Almost the entire military force of the nation is 
stationed upon the Mexican border to guard our territory 
against hostile raids. It must be supplied, and steadily 
supplied, with w^hatever it needs for its maintenance and 15 
efficiency. If it should be necessary for purposes of na- 
tional defense to transfer any portion of it upon short 
notice to some other part of the country, for reasons now 
unforeseen, ample means of transportation must be 
available, and available without delay. The power con- 20 
ferred in this matter should be carefully and explicitly 
limited to cases of military necessity, but in all such cases 
it should be clear and ample. 

There is one other thing we should do if we are true 
champions of arbitration. We should make all arbitral 25 
awards judgments by record of a court of law in order that 
their interpretation and enforcement may lie, not with one 
of the parties to the arbitration, but wdth an impartial and 
authoritative tribunal. 

These things I urge upon you, not in haste or merely as a 30 
means of meeting a present emergency, but as permanent 
and necessary additions to the law of the land, suggested, 
indeed, by circumstances we had hoped never to see, but 
imperative as well as just, if such emergencies are to be 



1 86 Woodrow Wilson 

prevented in the future. I feel that no extended argument 
is needed to commend them to your favorable considera- 
tion. They demonstrate themselves. The time and the 
occasion only give emphasis to their importance. We need 
5 them now and we shall continue to need them. 



SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 

[On being offered the nomination for President by the Democratic 
Party. Delivered at Shadow Lawn, Sea Girt, N. J., Saturday, Sep- 
tember 2, 1916.] 

Senator James, Gentlemen of the Notification Com- 
mittee, Fellow-Citizens: 

I cannot accept the leadership and responsibility which 
the National Democratic Convention has again, in such 
generous fashion, asked me to accept without first express- 5 
ing my profound gratitude to the party for the trust it 
reposes in me after four years of fiery trial in the midst of 
affairs of unprecedented difficulty, and the keen sense of 
added responsibility with which this honor fills (I had al- 
most said burdens) me as I think of the great issues of 10 
national life and policy involved in the present and imme- 
diate future conduct of our Government. I shall seek, as 
I have always sought, to justify the extraordinary con- 
fidence thus reposed in me by striving to purge my heart 
and purpose of every personal and of every misleading 15 
party motive and devoting every energy I have to the 
service of the nation as a whole, praying that I may 
continue to have the counsel and support of all forward- 
looking men at every turn of the difficult business. 

For I do not doubt that the people of the United States 20 
will wish the Democratic Party to continue in control of 
the Government. They are not in the habit of rejecting 
those who have actually served them for those who are 
making doubtful and conjectural promises of service. 
Least of all are they likely to substitute those who promised 25 
to render them particular services and proved false to that 

187 



1 88 Woodrow Wilson 

promise for those who have actually rendered those very 
services. 

Boasting is always an empty business, which pleases no- 
body but the boaster, and I have no disposition to boast of 
5 what the Democratic Party has accomplished. It has 
merely done its duty. It has merely fulfilled its explicit 
promises. But there can be no violation of good taste in 
calling attention to the manner in which those promises 
have been carried out or in adverting to the interesting 
10 fact that many of the things accomplished were what the 
opposition party had again and again promised to do but 
had left undone. Indeed that is manifestly part of the 
business of this year of reckoning and assessment. There 
is no means of judging the future except by assessing the 
15 past. Constructive action must be weighed against de- 
structive comment and reaction. The Democrats either 
have or have not understood the varied interests of the 
country. The test is contained in the record. 

What is that record? What were the Democrats called 
2o into power to do? What things had long waited to be 
done, and how did the Democrats do them? It is a record 
of extraordinary length and variety, rich in elements of 
many kinds, but consistent in principle throughout and 
susceptible of brief recital. 
25 The Republican Party was put out of power because of 
failure, practical failure and moral failure; because it had 
served special interests and not the country at large; be- 
cause, under the leadership of its preferred and established 
guides, of those who still make its choices, it had lost touch 
30 with the thoughts and the needs of the nation and was 
living in a past age and under a fixed illusion, the illusion of 
greatness. It had framed tariff laws based upon a fear of 
foreign trade, a fundamental doubt as to American skill, 
enterprise, and capacity, and a very tender regard for the 



Speech of Acceptance 189 

profitable privileges of those who had gained control of 
domestic markets and domestic credits; and yet had 
enacted anti-trust laws which hampered the very things 
they meant to foster, which were stiff and inelastic, and in 
part unintelligible. It had permitted the country through- 5 
out the long period of its control to stagger from one 
financial crisis to another under the operation of a national 
banking law of its own framing which made stringency and 
panic certain and the control of the larger business opera- 
tions of the country by the bankers of a few reserve 10 
centers inevitable; had made as if it meant to reform the 
law but had faint-heartedly failed in the attempt, because 
it could not bring itself to do the one thing necessary to 
make the reform genuine and effectual, namely, break up 
the control of small groups of bankers. It had been 15 
oblivious, or indifferent, to the fact that the farmers, upon 
whom the country depends for its food and in the last 
analysis for its prosperity, were without standing in the 
matter of commercial credit, without the protection of 
standards in their market transactions, and without sys- 20 
tematic knowledge of the markets themselves; that the 
laborers of the country, the great army of men who man 
the industries it was professing to father and promote, 
carried their labor as a mere commodity to market, were 
subject to restraint by novel and drastic process in the 25 
courts, were without assurance of compensation for in- 
dustrial accidents, without federal assistance in accom- 
modating labor disputes, and without national aid or 
advice in finding the places and the industries in which 
their labor was most needed. The country had no national 30 
system of road construction and development. Little 
intelligent attention was paid to the army, and not enough 
to the navy. The other republics of America distrusted 
us, because they found that we thought first of the profits 



190 Woodrow Wilson 

of American investors and only as an afterthought of im- 
partial justice and helpful friendship. Its policy was 
provincial in all things; its purposes were out of harmony 
with the temper and purpose of the people and the timely 
5 development of the nation's interests. 

So things stood when the Democratic Party came into 
power. How^ do they stand now? Alike in the domestic 
field and in the wide field of the commerce of the world, 
American business and life and industry have been set 

10 free to move as they never moved before. 

The tariff has been revised, not on the principle of re- 
pelling foreign trade, but upon the principle of encour- 
aging it, upon something like a footing of equality with 
our own in respect of the terms of competition, and a 

15 Tariff Board has been created whose function it will be 
to keep the relations of American with foreign business 
and industry under constant observation, for the guidance 
alike of our business men and of our Congress. Ameri- 
can energies are now directed towards the markets of 

20 the world. 

The laws against trusts have been clarified by definition, 
w^ith a view to making it plain that they were not directed 
against big business but only against unfair business and 
the pretense of competition where there was none; and a 

25 Trade Commission has been created with powers of guid- 
ance and accommodation which have relieved business 
men of unfounded fears and set them upon the road of 
hopeful and confident enterprise. 

By the Federal Reserve Act the supply of currency at 

30 the disposal of active business has been rendered elastic, 
taking its volume, not from a fixed body of investment 
securities, but from the liquid assets of daily trade; and 
these assets are assessed and accepted, not by distant 
groups of bankers in control of unavailable reserves, but 



Speech of Acceptance 191 

by bankers at the many centers of local exchange who are 
in touch with local conditions everywhere. 

Effective measures have been taken for the re-creation of 
an American merchant marine and the revival of the 
American carrying trade indispensable to our emancipa- 5 
tion from the control which foreigners have so long exer- 
cised over the opportunities, the routes, and the methods 
of our commerce with other countries. 

The Interstate Commerce Commission is about to be reor- 
ganized to enable it to perform its great and important func- 10 
tions more promptly and more efficiently. We have created, 
extended and iniproved the service of the parcels post. 

So much we have done for business. What other party 
has understood the task so well or executed it so intelli- 
gently and energetically? What other party has at- 15 
tempted it at all? The Republican leaders, apparently, 
know of no means of assisting business but "protection." 
How to stimulate it and put it upon a new footing of 
energy and enterprise they have not suggested. 

For the farmers of the country we have virtually created 20 
commercial credit, by means of the Federal Reserve Act 
and the Rural Credits Act. They now have the standing 
of other business men in the money market. We have suc- 
cessfully regulated speculation in ''futures" and established 
standards in the marketing of grains. By an intelligent 25 
Warehouse Act we have assisted to make the standard 
crops available as never before both for systematic market- 
ing and as a security for loans from the banks. We have 
greatly added to the work of neighborhood demonstration 
on the farm itself of improved methods of cultivation,\nd, 30 
through the intelligent extension of the functions of the 
Department of Agriculture, have made it possible for the 
farmer to learn systematically where his best markets are 
and how to get at them. 



192 Woodrow Wilson 

The workingmen of America have been given a veritable 
emancipation, by the legal recognition of a man's labor 
as part of his life, and not a mere marketable commodity; 
by exempting labor organizations from processes of the 
5 courts which treated their members like fractional parts 
of mobs and not like accessible and responsible individuals; 
by releasing our seamen from involuntary servitude; by 
making adequate provision for compensation for indus- 
trial accidents; by providing suitable machinery for media- 

10 tion and conciliation in industrial disputes; and by putting 
the Federal Department of Labor at the disposal of the 
workingman when in search of work. 

We have effected the emancipation of the children of 
the country by releasing them from hurtful labor. We 

15 have instituted a system of national aid in the building 
of highroads such as the country has been feeling after 
for a century. We have sought to equalize taxation by 
means of an equitable income tax. We have taken the 
steps that ought to have been taken at the outset to open 

20 up the resources of Alaska. We have provided for national 
defense upon a scale never before seriously proposed upon 
the responsibihty of an entire political party. We have 
driven the tariff lobby from cover and obliged it to sub- 
stitute solid argument for private influence. 

25 This extraordinary recital must sound like a platform, 
a list of sanguine promises; but it is not. It is a record of 
prornises made four years ago and now actually redeemed 
in constructive legislation. 

These things must profoundly disturb the thoughts and 

30 confound the plans of those who have made themselves 
believe that the Democratic Party neither understood nor 
was ready to assist the business of the country in the 
great enterprises which it is its evident and inevitable 
destiny to undertake and carry through. The breaking 



Speech of Acceptance 193 

up of the lobby must especially disconcert them: for it 
was through the lobby that they sought and were sure 
they had found the heart of things. The game of privilege 
can be played successfully by no other means. 

This record must equally astonish those who feared 5 
that the Democratic Party had not opened its heart to 
comprehend the demands of social justice. We have in 
four years come very near to carrying out the platform of 
the Progressive Party as well as our own; for we also are 
progressives. 10 

There is one circumstance connected with this pro- 
gram which ought to be very plainly stated. It was re- 
sisted at every step by the interests which the Repubhcan 
Party had catered to and fostered at the expense of the 
country, and these same interests are now earnestly pray- 15 
ing for a reaction which will save their privileges, — for 
the restoration of their sworn friends to power before 
it is too late to recover what they have lost. They fought 
with particular desperation and infinite resourcefulness 
the reform of the banking and currency system, knowing 20 
that to be the citadel of their control; and most anxiously 
are they hoping and planning for the amendment of the 
Federal Reserve Act by the concentration of control in 
a single bank which the old famihar group of bankers can 
keep under their eye and direction. But while the "big 25 
men" who used to write the tariffs and command the 
assistance of the Treasury have been hostile, — all but a 
few with vision, — the average business man knows that 
he has been delivered, and that the fear that was once 
every day in his heart, that the men who controlled credit 3^ 
and directed enterprise from the committee rooms of 
Congress would crush him, is there no more, and will not 
return, — unless the party that consulted only the "big 
men" should return to power, — the party of masterly 



1^4 Woodrow Wilson 

inactivity and cunning resourcefulness in standing pat to 
resist change. 

The Republican Party is just the party that cannot 
meet the new conditions of a new age. It does not know 

5 the way and it does not wish new conditions. It tried to 
break away from the old leaders and could not. They 
still select its candidates and dictate its poHcy, still resist 
change, still hanker after the old conditions, still know 
no methods of encouraging business but the old methods. 

lo When it changes its leaders and its purposes and brings 
its ideas up to date it will have the right to ask the Amer- 
ican people to give it power again; but not until then. 
A new age, an age of revolutionary change, needs new 
purposes and new ideas. 

15 In foreign affairs we have been guided by principles 
clearly conceived and consistently lived up to. Perhaps 
they have not been fully comprehended because they 
have hitherto governed international affairs only in theory, 
not in practice. They are simple, obvious, easily stated, 

20 and fundamental to American ideals. 

We have been neutral not only because it was the fixed 
and traditional policy of the United States to stand aloof 
from the politics of Europe and because we had had no 
part either of action or of policy in the influences which 

25 brought on the present war, but also because it was mani- 
festly our duty to prevent, if it were possible, the indef- 
inite extension of the fires of hate and desolation kindled 
by that terrible conflict and seek to serve mankind by 
reserving our strength and our resources for the anxious 

30 and difficult days of restoration and heahng which must 
follow, when peace will have to build its house anew. 

The rights of our own citizens of course became involved: 
that was inevitable. Where they did this was our guiding 
principle: that property rights can be vindicated by claims 



Speech of Acceptance 195 

for damages and no modern nation can decline to arbi- 
trate such claims; but the fundamental rights of humanity 
cannot be. The loss of life is irreparable. Neither can 
direct violations of a nation's sovereignty await vindica- 
tion in suits for damages. The nation that violates these 5 
essential rights must expect to be checked and called to 
account by direct challenge and resistance. It at once 
makes the quarrel in part our own. These are plain prin- 
ciples and we have never lost sight of them or departed 
from them, whatever the stress or the perplexity of cir- 10 
cumstance or the provocation to hasty resentment. The 
record is clear and consistent throughout and stands dis- 
tinct and definite for anyone to judge who wishes to know 
the truth about it. 

The seas were not broad enough to keep the infection 15 
of the conflict out of our own politics. The passions and 
intrigues of certain active groups and combinations of men 
amongst us who were born under foreign flags injected the 
poison of disloyalty into our own most critical affairs, laid 
violent hands upon many of our industries, and subjected 20 
us to the shame of divisions of sentiment and purpose in 
which America was contemned and forgotten. It is part of 
the business of this year of reckoning and settlement to 
speak plainly and act with unmistakable purpose in re- 
buke of these things, in order that they may be forever 25 
hereafter impossible. I am the candidate of a party, but 
I am above all things else an American citizen. I neither 
seek the favor nor fear the displeasure of that small alien 
element amongst us which puts loyalty to any foreign 
power before loyalty to the United States. 30 

While Europe was at war our own continent, one of 
our own neighbors, was shaken by revolution. In that 
matter, too, principle was plain and it was imperative 
that we should live up to it if we were to deserve the 



1^6 Woodrow Wilson 

trust of any real partisan of the right as free men see it. 
We have professed to beheve, and we do beheve, that the 
people of small and weak states have the right to expect 
to be dealt with exactly as the people of big and powerful 

5 states would be. We have acted upon that principle in 
dealing with the people of Mexico. 

Our recent pursuit of bandits into Mexican territory 
was no violation of that principle. We ventured to enter 
Mexican territory only because there were no miUtary 

lo forces in Mexico that could protect our border from hostile 
attack and our own people from violence, and we have 
committed there no single act of hostihty or interference 
even with the sovereign authority of the Republic of 
Mexico herself. It was a plain case of the violation of our 

15 own sovereignty which could not wait to be vindicated 
by damages and for which there was no other remedy. 
The authorities of Mexico were powerless to prevent it. 

Many serious wrongs against the property, many ir- 
reparable wrongs against the persons of Americans have 

20 been committed within the territory of Mexico herself 
during this confused revolution, wrongs which could not 
be effectually checked so long as there was no constituted 
power in Mexico which was in a position to check them. 
We could not act directly in that matter ourselves with- 

25 out denying Mexicans the right to any revolution at all 
which disturbed us and making the emancipation of her 
own people await our own interest and convenience. 

For it is their emancipation that they are seeking,^ 
blindly, it may be, and as yet ineffectually, but with pro- 

30 found and passionate purpose and within their unques- 
tionable right, apply what true American principle you 
will, — any principle that an American would pubUcly 
avow. The people of Mexico have not been suffered to 
own their own country or direct their own institutions. 



Speech of Acceptance 197 

Outsiders, men out of other nations and with interests too 
often alien to their own, have dictated what their privi- 
leges and opportunities should be and who should control 
their land, their lives, and their resources, — some of them 
Americans, pressing for things they could never have got 5 
in their own country. The Mexican people are entitled 
to attempt their liberty from such influences; and so long 
as I have anything to do with the action of our great 
Government I shall do everything in my power to prevent 
anyone standing in their way. I know that this is hard 10 
for some persons to understand ; but it is not hard for the 
plain people of the United States to understand. It is 
hard doctrine only for those who wish to get something 
for themselves out of Mexico. There are men, and noble 
women, too, not a few, of our own people, thank God! 15 
whose fortunes are invested in great properties in Mexico 
who yet see the case with true vision and assess its issues 
with true American feeling. The rest can be left for the 
present out of the reckoning until this enslaved people 
has had its day of struggle towards the light. I have 20 
heard no one who was free from such influences propose 
interference by the United States with the internal affairs 
of Mexico. Certainly no friend of the Mexican people 
has proposed it. 

The people of the United States are capable of great 25 
sympathies and a noble pity in dealing with problems of 
this kind. As their spokesman and representative, I have 
tried to act in the spirit they would wish me show. The 
people of Mexico are striving for the rights that are funda- 
mental to Hfe and happiness, — 15,000,000 oppressed men, 30 
overburdened women, and pitiful children in virtual 
bondage in their own home of fertile lands and inexhausti- 
ble treasure! Some of the leaders of the revolution may 
often have been mistaken and violent and selfish, but the 



198 Woodrow Wilson 

revolution itself was inevitable and is right. The un- 
speakable Huerta betrayed the very comrades he served, 
traitorously overthrew the government of which he was a 
trusted part, impudently spoke for the very forces that 

5 had driven his people to the rebelHon with which he had 
pretended to sympathize. The men who overcame him 
and drove him out represent at least the fierce passion of 
reconstruction which lies at the very heart of liberty; and 
so long as they represent, however imperfectly, such a 

10 struggle for deliverance, I am ready to serve their ends 
when I can. So long as the power of recognition rests 
with me the Government of the United States will refuse 
to extend the hand of welcome to any one who obtains 
power in a sister republic by treachery and violence. No 

15 permanency can be given the affairs of any republic by a 
title based upon intrigue and assassination. I declared 
that to be the pohcy of this Administration within three 
weeks after I assumed the presidency. I here again vow it. 
I am more interested in the fortunes of oppressed men and 

20 pitiful women and children than in any property rights 
whatever. Mistakes I have no doubt made in this per- 
plexing business, but not in purpose or object. 

More is involved than the immediate destinies of Mexico 
and the relations of the United States with a distressed and 

25 distracted people. All America looks on. Test is now be- 
ing made of us whether we be sincere lovers of popular 
liberty or not and are indeed to be trusted to respect na- 
tional sovereignty among our weaker neighbors. We have 
undertaken these many years to play big brother to the 

30 republics of this hemisphere. This is the day of our test 
whether we mean, or have ever meant, to play that part 
for our own benefit wholly or also for theirs. Upon the 
outcome of that test (its outcome in their minds, not in 
ours) depends every relationship of the United States with 



speech of Acceptance 199 

Latin America, whether in poHtics or in commerce and 
enterprise. These are great issues and he at the heart of 
the gravest tasks of the future, tasks both economic and 
pohtical and very intimately inwrought with many of the 
most vital of the new issues of the politics of the world. 5 
The republics of America have in the last three years 
been drawing together in a new spirit of accommodation, 
mutual understanding, and cordial cooperation. Much of 
the politics of the world in the years to come will depend 
upon their relationships with one another. It is a barren 10 
and provincial statesmanship that loses sight of such 
things ! 

The future, the immediate future, will bring us squarely 
face to face with many great and exacting problems which 
will search us through and through whether we be able and 15 
ready to play the part in the world that we mean to play. 
It will not bring us into their presence slowly, gently, with 
ceremonious introduction, but suddenly and at once, the 
moment the war in Europe is over. They will be new 
problems, most of them; many will be old problems in a 20 
new setting and with new elements which we have never 
dealt with or reckoned the force and meaning of before. 
They will require for their solution new thinking, fresh 
courage and resourcefulness, and in some matters radical 
reconsiderations of pohcy. We must be ready to mobilize 25 
our resources alike of brains and of materials. 

It is not a future to be afraid of. It is, rather, a future 
to stimulate and excite us to the display of the best powers 
that are in us. We may enter it with confidence when we 
are sure that we understand it, — and we have provided 30 
ourselves already with the means of understanding it. 

Look first at what it will be necessary that the nations 
of the world should do to make the days to come tolerable 
and fit to live and work in; and then look at our part in 



200 Woodrow Wilson 

what is to follow and our own duty of preparation. For we 
must be prepared both in resources and in policy. 

There must be a just and settled peace, and we here in 
America must contribute the full force of our enthusiasm 

5 and of our authority as a nation to the organization of that 
peace upon world-wide foundations that cannot easily be 
shaken. No nation should be forced to take sides in any 
quarrel in which its own honor and integrity and the 
fortunes of its own people are not involved; but no nation 

lo can any longer remain neutral as against any wilful dis- 
turbance of the peace of the world. The effects of war can 
no longer be confined to the areas of battle. No nation 
stands wholly apart in interest when the life and interests 
of all nations are thrown into confusion and peril. If 

15 hopeful and generous enterprise is to be renewed, if the 
healing and helpful arts of life are indeed to be revived 
when peace comes again, a new atmosphere of justice and 
friendship must be generated by means the world has 
never tried before. The nations of the world must unite in 

20 joint guarantees that whatever is done to disturb the 
whole world's life must first be tested in the court of the 
whole world's opinion before it is attempted. 

These are the new foundations the world must build for 
itself, and we must play our part in the reconstruction, 

25 generously and without too much thought of our separate 
interests. We must make ourselves ready to play it in- 
telligently, vigorously, and well. 

One of the contributions we must make to the world's 
peace is this: We must see to it that the people in our 

30 insular possessions are treated in their own lands as we 

would treat them here, and make the rule of the United 

States mean the same thing everywhere, — the same justice, 

the same consideration for the essential rights of men. 

Besides contributing our ungrudging moral and prac- 



Speech of Acceptance 201 

tical support to the estabHshment of peace throughout 
the world we must actively and intelligently prepare our- 
selves to do our full service in the trade and industry which 
are to sustain and develop the life of the nations in the 
days to come. 

We have already been provident in this great matter and 
supplied ourselves with the instrumentahties of prompt 
adjustment. We have created, in the Federal Trade Com- 
mission, a means of inquiry and of accommodation in the 
field of commerce which ought both to coordinate the ic 
enterprises of our traders and manufacturers and to re- 
move the barriers of misunderstanding and of a too 
technical interpretation of the law. In the new Tariff 
Commission we have added another instrumentality of 
observation and adjustment which promises to be imme- 15 
diately serviceable. The Trade Commission substitutes 
counsel and accommodation for the harsher processes of 
legal restraint, and the Tariff Commission ought to sub- 
stitute facts for prejudices and theories. Our exporters 
have for some time had the advantage of working in the 20 
new light thrown upon foreign markets and opportunities 
of trade by the intelligent inquiries and activities of the 
Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce which the 
Democratic Congress so wisely created in 1912. The 
Tariff Commission completes the machinery by which we 25 
shall be enabled to open up our legislative policy to the 
facts as they develop. 

We can no longer indulge our traditional provinciaHsm. 
We are to play a leading part in the world drama whether 
we wish it or not. We shall lend, not borrow; act for our- 30 
selves, not imitate or follow; organize and initiate, not 
peep about merely to see where we may get in. 

W^e have already formulated and agreed upon a policy 
of law which will explicitly remove the ban now supposed 



202 Woodrow Wilson 

to rest upon cooperation amongst our exporters in seeking 
and securing their proper place in the markets of the 
world. The field will be free, the instrumentalities at 
hand. It will only remain for the masters of enterprise 
5 amongst us to act in energetic concert, and for the Govern- 
ment of the United States to insist upon the maintenance 
throughout the world of those conditions of fairness and of 
even-handed justice in the commercial dealings of the 
nations with one another upon which, after all, in the last 

lo analysis, the peace and ordered life of the world must 
ultimately depend. 

At home also we must see to it that the men who plan 
and develop and direct our business enterprises shall enjoy 
definite and settled conditions of law, a policy accom- 

15 modated to the freest progress. We have set the just and 
necessary limits. We have put all kinds of unfair com- 
petition under the ban and penalty of the law. We have 
barred monopoly. These fatal and ugly things being 
excluded, we must now quicken action and facilitate 

20 enterprise by every just means within our choice. There 
will be peace in the business world, and, with peace, re- 
vived confidence and life. 

We ought both to husband and to develop our natural 
resources, our mines, our forests, our water power. I wish 

25 we could have made more progress than we have made in 
this vital matter; and I call once more, with the deepest 
earnestness and solicitude, upon the advocates of a careful 
and provident conservation, on the one hand, and the 
advocates of a free and inviting field for private capital, 

30 on the other, to get together in a spirit of genuine accom- 
modation and agreement and set this great policy forward 
at once. 

We must hearten and quicken the spirit and efficiency of 
labor throughout our whole industrial system by every- 



Speech of Acceptance 203 

where and in all occupations doing justice to the laborer, 
not only by paying a living wage but also by making all the 
conditions that surround labor what they ought to be. 
And we must do more than justice. We must safeguard 
life and promote health and safety in every occupation in 5 
which they are threatened or imperilled. That is more 
than justice, and better, because it is humanity and 
economy. 

We must coordinate the railway systems of the country 
for national use, and must facilitate and promote their 10 
development with a view to that coordination and to their 
better adaptation as a whole to the life and trade and. 
defense of the nation. The Hfe and industry of the country 
can be free and unhampered only if these arteries are open, 
efficient, and complete. 15 

Thus shall we stand ready to meet the future as cir- 
cumstance and international policy effect their unfolding, 
whether the changes come slowly or come fast and without 
preface. 

I have not spoken explicitly, Gentlemen, of the plat- 20 
form adopted at St. Louis; but it has been implicit in all 
that I have said. I have sought to interpret its spirit and 
meaning. The people of the United States do not need to 
be assured now that that platform is a definite pledge, a 
practical program. We have proved to them that our 25 
promises are made to be kept. 

We hold very definite ideals. We believe that the 
energy and initiative of our people have been too narrowly 
coached and superintended; that they should be set free, as 
we have set them free, to disperse themselves throughout 30 
the nation; that they should not be concentrated in the 
hands of a few powerful guides and guardians, as our 
opponents have again and again, in effect if not in purpose, 
sought to concentrate them. We believe, moreover, — 



204 Woodrow Wilson 

who that looks about him now with comprehending eye 
can fail to believe?— that the day of Little Americanism, 
with its narrow horizons, when methods of "protection" 
and industrial nursing were the chief study of our pro- 

5 vincial statesmen, are past and gone and that a day of 
enterprise has at last dawned for the United States whose 
field is the wide world. 

We hope to see the stimulus of that new day draw all 
America, the republics of both continents, on to a new life 

lo and energy and initiative in the great affairs of peace. 
We are Americans for Big America, and rejoice to look 
forward to the days in which America shall strive to stir 
the world without irritating it or drawing it on to new 
antagonisms, when the nations with which we deal shall 
at last come to see upon what deep foundations of hu- 

15 manity and justice our passion for peace rests, and when 
all mankind shall look upon our great people with a new 
sentiment of admiration, friendly rivalry and real affection, 
as upon a people who, though keen to succeed, seeks always 
to be at once generous and just and to whom humanity is 

20 dearer than profit or selfish power. 

Upon this record and in the faith of this purpose we go 
to the country. 



LINCOLN'S BEGINNINGS 

[Address delivered September 4, 19 16, on the acceptance of a deed 
of gift to the Nation, by the Lincoln Farm Association, of the Lincoln 
Birthplace Farm, at Hodgenville, Kentucky.] 

No more significant memorial could have been pre- 
sented to the nation than this. It expresses so much of 
what is singular and noteworthy in the history of the 
country; it suggests so many of the things that we prize 
most highly in our life and in our system of government. 5 
How eloquent this little house within this shrine is of the 
vigor of democracy! There is nowhere in the land any 
home so remote, so humble, that it may not contain the 
powTr of mind and heart and conscience to which nations 
yield and history submits its processes. Natiu*e pays no to 
tribute to aristocracy, subscribes to no creed of caste, 
renders fealty to no monarch or master of any name or 
kind. Genius is no snob. It does not run after titles or 
seek by preference the high circles of society. It affects 
humble company as well as great. It pays no special 15 
tribute to universities or learned societies or conventional 
standards of greatness, .but serenely chooses its own com- 
rades, its ow^n haunts, its own cradle even, and its own 
Hfe of adventure and of training. Here is proof of it. This 
little hut was the cradle of one of the great sons of men, 20 
a man of singular, delightful, vital genius who presently 
emerged upon the great stage of the nation's history, 
gaunt, shy, ungainly, but dominant and majestic, a nat- 
ural ruler of men, himself inevitably the central figure 
of the great plot. No man can explain this, but every 25 
man can see how it demonstrates the vigor of democracy, 
where every door is open, in every hamlet and country- 

205 



2o6 Woodrow Wilson 

side, in city and wilderness alike, for the ruler to emerge 
when he will and claim his leadership in the free life. 
Such are the authentic proofs of the validity and vitality 
of democracy. 
5 Here, no less, hides the mystery of democracy. Who 
shall guess this secret of nature and providence and a 
free polity? Whatever the vigor and vitality of the stock 
from which he sprang, its mere vigor and soundness do 
not explain where this man got his great heart that seemed 

lo to comprehend all mankind in its catholic and benignant 
sympathy, the mind that sat enthroned behind those 
brooding, melancholy eyes, whose vision swept many an 
horizon w^hich those about him dreamed not of, — that 
mind that comprehended w^hat it had never seen, and 

15 understood the language of affairs with the ready ease of 
one to the manner born, — or that nature which seemed in 
its varied richness to be the familiar of men of every w^ay 
of life. This is the sacred mystery of democracy, that 
its richest fruits spring up out of soils which no man has 

20 prepared and in circumstances amidst which they are the 
least expected. This is a place alike of mystery and of 
reassurance. 

It is likely that in a society ordered otherwise than our 
own Lincoln could not have found himself or the path of 

25 fame and power upon which he walked serenely to his 
death. In this place it is right that we should remind 
ourselves of the solid and striking facts upon which our 
faith in democracy is founded. Many another man be- 
sides Lincoln has served the nation in its highest places of 

30 counsel and of action whose origins were as humble as his. 
Though the greatest example of the universal energy, 
richness, stimulation, and force of democracy, he is only 
one example among many. The permeating and all- 
pervasive virtue of the freedom which challenges us in 



Lincoln's Beginnings 207 

America to make the most of every gift and power we 
possess every page of our history serves to emphasize 
and illustrate. Standing here in this place, it seems almost 
the whole of the stirring story. 

Here Lincoln had his beginnings. Here the end and 5 
consummation of that great life seem remote and a bit 
incredible. And yet there was no break anywhere be- 
tween beginning and end, no lack of natural sequence 
anywhere. Nothing really incredible happened. Lincoln 
was unaffectedly as much at home in the White House as 10 
he was here. Do you share with me the feeling, I wonder, 
that he was permanently at home nowhere? It seems to 
me that in the case of a man, — I would rather say of a 
spirit, — like Lincoln the question where he w^as is of little 
significance, that it is always what he was that really ar- 15 
rests our thought and takes hold of our imagination. 
It is the spirit always that is sovereign. Lincoln, like the 
rest of us, was put through the discipline of the world, — a 
very rough and exacting discipline for him, an indispen- 
sable discipline for every man who would know what he 20 
is about in the midst of the world's affairs; but his spirit 
got only its schooling there. It did not derive its character 
or its vision from the experiences which brought it to its 
full revelation. The test of every American must always 
be, not where he is, but what he is. That, also, is of the 25 
essence of democracy, and is the moral of which this place 
is most gravely expressive. 

We would like to think of men like Lincoln and Wash- 
ington as typical Americans, but no man can be typical 
who is so unusual as these great men were. It was typical 30 
of American life that it should produce such men with 
supreme indifference as to the manner in which it pro- 
duced them, and as readily here in this hut as amidst the 
little circle of cultivated gentlemen to whom Virginia 



2o8 Wood row Wilson 

owed so much in leadership and example. And Lincoln 
and Washington were t>pical Americans in the use they 
made of their genius. But there will be few such men at 
best, and we will not look into the mystery of how and 

5 why they come. We will only keep the door open for 
them always, and a hearty welcome, — after we have 
recognized them. 

I have read many biographies of Lincoln; I have sought 
out with the greatest interest the many intimate stories 

lo that are told of him, the narratives of nearby friends, the 
sketches at close quarters, in which those who had the 
privilege of being associated with him have tried to depict 
for us the very man himself "in his habit as he lived;'* 
but I have nowhere found a real intimate of Lincoln's. I 

15 nowhere get the impression in any narrative or reminis- 
cence that the writer had in fact penetrated to the heart 
of his mystery, or that any man could penetrate to the 
heart of it. That brooding spirit had no real familiars. I 
get the impression that it never spoke out in complete 

20 self-revelation, and that it could not reveal itself com- 
pletely to anyone. It was a very lonely spirit that looked 
out from underneath those shaggy brows and compre- 
hended men without fully communing with them, as if, 
in spite of all its genial efforts at comradeship, it dwelt 

25 apart, saw its visions of duty where no man looked on. 
There is a very holy and very terrible isolation for the 
conscience of every man who seeks to read the destiny 
in affairs for others as well as for himself, for a nation as 
well as for individauls. That privacy no man can intrude 

30 upon. That lonely search of the spirit for the right per- 
haps no man can assist. This strange child of the cabin 
kept company with invisible things, was born into no 
intimacy but that of its own silently assembling and de- 
ploying thoughts. 



Lincoln's Beginnings 209 

I have come here to-day, not to utter a eulogy on Lin- 
coln; he stands in need of none, but to endeavor to inter- 
pret the meaning of this gift to the nation of the place of 
his birth and origin. Is not this an altar upon which we 
may forever keep alive the vestal fire of democracy as 5 
upon a shrine at which some of the deepest and most 
sacred hopes of mankind may from age to age be re- 
kindled? For these hopes must constantly be rekindled, 
and only those who live can rekindle them. The only 
stuff that can retain the life-giving heat is the stuff of 10 
living hearts. And the hopes of mankind cannot be kept 
alive by words merely, by constitutions and doctrines of 
right and codes of liberty. The object of democracy is to 
transmute these into the life and action of society, the 
self-denial and self-sacrifice of heroic men and women 15 
willing to make their lives an embodiment of right and 
service and enlightened purpose. The commands of 
democracy are as imperative as its privileges and oppor- 
tunities are wide and generous. Its compulsion is upon 
us. It will be great and lift a great light for the guidance 20 
of the nations only if we are great and carry that light 
high for the guidance of our own feet. We are not worthy 
to stand here unless we ourselves be in deed and in truth 
real democrats and servants of mankind, ready to give 
our very lives for the freedom and justice and spiritual ex- 25 
altation of the great nation which shelters and nurtures us. 



THE TRIUMPH OF WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE 

[Address at the Suffrage Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 
Septebmer 8, 1916.] 

Madam President, Ladies of the Association: 

I have found it a real privilege to be here to-night and 
to listen to the addresses which you have heard. Though 
you may not all of you believe it, I would a great deal 

S rather hear somebody else speak than speak myself; but 
I should feel that I was omitting a duty if I did not address 
you to-night and say some of the things that have been 
in my thought as I realized the approach of this evening 
and the duty that would fall upon me. 

10 The astonishing thing about the movement which you 
represent is, not that it has grown so slowly, but that it 
has grown so rapidly. No doubt for those who have been 
a long time in the struggle, like your honored president, 
it seems a long and arduous path that has been trodden, 

15 but when you think of the cumulating force of this move- 
ment in recent decades, you must agree with me that it is 
one of the most astonishing tides in modern history. Two 
generations ago, no doubt Madam President will agree 
with me in saying, it was a handful of women who were 

20 fighting this cause. Now it is a great multitude of women 
who are fighting it. 

And there are some interesting historical connections 
which I would like to attempt to point out to you. One 
of the most striking facts about the history of the United 

25 States is that at the outset it was a lawyers' history. 
Almost all of the questions to which America addressed 
itself, say a hundred years ago, were legal questions, were 

210 



The Triumph of Women's Suffrage 211 

questions of method, not questions of what you were 
going to do with your Government, but questions of how 
you were going to constitute your Government, — how 
you w^ere going to balance the powers of the States and 
the Federal Government, how you were going to balance 5 
the claims of property against the processes of liberty, 
how you were going to make your governments up so as 
to balance the parts against each other so that the legisla- 
ture would check the executive, and the executive the 
legislature, and the courts both of them put together. 10 
The whole conception of government when the United 
States became a Nation was a mechanical conception of 
government, and the mechanical conception of govern- 
ment which underlay it was the Newtonian theory of the 
universe. If you pick up the Federalist, some parts of 15 
it read like a treatise on astronomy instead of a treatise 
on government. They speak of the centrifugal and the 
centripetal forces, and locate the President somewhere 
in a rotating system. The whole thing is a calculation of 
power and an adjustment of parts. There was a time 20 
when nobody but a lawyer could know enough to 
run the Government of the United States, and a dis- 
tinguished English publicist once remarked, speaking 
of the complexity of the American Government, that 
it was no proof of the excellence of the American 25 
Constitution that it had been successfully operated, 
because the Americans could run any constitution. But 
there have been a great many technical difficulties in 
running it. 

And then something happened. A great question arose 30 
in this country which, though complicated with legal 
elements, was at bottom a human question, and nothing 
but a question of humanity. That was the slavery ques- 
tion. And is it not significant that it was then, and then 



212 Woodrow Wilson 

for the first time, that women became prominent in politics 
in America? Not many women; those prominent in that 
day were so few that you can name them over in a brief 
catalogue, but, nevertheless, they then began to play a 
5 part in writing, not only, but in pubHc speech, which was 
a very novel part for women to play in America. After 
the Civil War had settled some of what seemed to be the 
most difficult legal questions of our system, the life of the 
Nation began not only to unfold, but to accumulate. 

lo Life in the United States was a comparatively simple 
matter at the time of the Civil War. There was none of 
that underground struggle which is now so manifest to 
those who look only a httle way beneath the surface. 
Stories such as Dr. Davis has told to-night were uncommon 

15 in those simpler days. The pressure of low wages, the 
agony of obscure and unremunerated toil, did not exist in 
America in anything like the same proportions that they 
exist now. And as our life has unfolded and accumulated, 
as the contacts of it have become hot, as the populations 

20 have assembled in the cities, and the cool spaces of the 
country have been supplanted by the feverish urban 
areas, the whole nature of our political questions has been 
altered. They have ceased to be legal questions. They 
have more and more become social questions, questions 

25 with regard to the relations of human beings to one an- 
other, — not merely their legal relations, but their moral 
and spiritual relations to one another. This has been 
most characteristic of American life in the last few dec- 
ades, and as these questions have assumed greater 

30. and greater prominence, the movement which this as- 
sociation represents has gathered cumulative force. So 
that, if anybody asks himself, ^'What does this gather- 
ing force mean," if he knows anything about the his- 
tory of the country, he knows that it means something 



The Triumph of Women's Suffrage 213 

that has not only come to stay, but has come with con- 
quering power. 

I get a Httle impatient sometimes about the discussion 
of the channels and methods by which it is to prevail. 
It is going to prevail, and that is a very superficial and 5 
ignorant view of it which attributes it to mere social un- 
rest. It is not merely because the women are discontented. 
It is because the women have seen visions of duty, and 
that is something which we not only cannot resist, but, 
if we be true Americans, we do not wish to resist. America lo" 
took its origin in visions of the human spirit, in aspira- 
tions for the deepest sort of liberty of the mind and of the 
heart, and as visions of that sort come up to the sight of 
those who are spiritually minded in America, America 
comes more and more into her birthright and into the per- 15 
fection of her development. 

So that what we have to realize in dealing with forces 
of this sort is that we are dealing with the substance of 
life itself. I have felt as I sat here to-night the wholesome 
contagion of the occasion. Almost every other time that 20 
I ever visited Atlantic City, I came to fight somebody. 
I hardly know how to conduct myself when I have not 
come to fight against anybody, but with somebody. I 
have come to suggest, among other things, that when the 
forces of nature are steadily working and the tide is rising 25 
to meet the moon, you need not be afraid that it will not 
come to its flood. We feel the tide; we rejoice in the 
strength of it ; and we shall not quarrel in the long run as 
to the method of it. Because, when you are working with 
masses of men and organized bodies of opinion, you have 30 
got to carry the organized body along. The whole art 
and practice of government consists not in moving in- 
dividuals, but in moving masses. It is all very well to 
run ahead and beckon, but, after all, you have got to 



214 Woodrow Wilson 

wait for the body to follow. I have not come to ask you 
to be patient, because you have been, but I have come to 
congratulate you that there was a force behind you that 
will beyond any peradventure be triumphant, and for 
which you can afford a little while to wait. 



THE TERMS OF PEACE 

[Address to the Senate of the United States, delivered January 22, 
1917.] 

Gentlemen of the Senate: 

On the eighteenth of December last I addressed an 
identic note to the governments of the nations now at 
war requesting them to state, more definitely than they 
had yet been stated by either group of belligerents, the 5 
terms upon which they would deem it possible to make 
peace. I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the rights 
of all neutral nations like our own, many of whose most 
vital interests the war puts in constant jeopardy. The 
Central Powers united in a reply which stated merely 10 
that they were ready to meet their antagonists in con- 
ference to discuss terms of peace. The Entente Powers 
have replied much more definitely and have stated, in 
general terms, indeed, but with sufficient definiteness to 
imply details, the arrangements, guarantees, and acts of 15 
reparation which they deem to be the indispensable con- 
ditions of a satisfactory settlement. We are that much 
nearer a definite discussion of the peace which shall end 
the present war. We are that much nearer the discussion 
of the international concert which must thereafter hold 20 
the world at peace. In every discussion of the peace 
that must end this war it is taken for granted that that 
peace must be followed by some definite concert of power 
which will make it virtually impossible that any such 
catastrophe should ever overwhelm us again. Every lover 25 
of mankind, every sane and thoughtful man must take 
that for granted. 

215 



21 6 Woodrow Wilson 

I have sought this opportunity to address you because 
I thought that I owed it to you, as the council associated 
with me in the final determination of our international 
obligations, to disclose to you without reserve the thought 
5 and purpose that have been taking form in my mind in 
regard to the duty of our Government in the days to come 
when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new 
plan the foundations of peace among the nations. 

It is inconceivable that the people of the United States 

lo should play no part in that great enterprise. To take 
part in such a service will be the opportunity for which 
they have sought to prepare themselves by the very 
principles and purposes of their polity and the approved 
practices of their Government ever since the days when 

15 they set up a new nation in the high and honorable hope 
that it might in all that it was and did show mankind the 
way to liberty. They cannot in honor withhold the serv- 
ice to which they are now about to be challenged. They 
do not wish to withhold it. But they owe it to themselves 

20 and to the other nations of the world to state the condi- 
tions under which they will feel free to render it. 

That service is nothing less than this, to add their au- 
thority and their power to the authority and force of 
other nations to guarantee peace and justice throughout 

25 the world. Such a settlement cannot now be long post- 
poned. It is right that before it comes this Government 
should frankly formulate the conditions upon which it 
would feel justified in asking our people to approve its 
formal and solemn adherence to a League for Peace. I 

30 am here to attempt to state those conditions. 

The present war must first be ended; but we owe it to 
candor and to a just regard for the opinion of mankind 
to say that, so far as our participation in guarantees of 
future peace is concerned, it makes a great deal of dif- 



The Terms of Peace 217 

ference in what way and upon what terms it is ended. 
The treaties and agreements which bring it to an end 
must embody terms which will create a peace that is 
worth guaranteeing and preserving, a peace that will win 
the approval of mankind, not merely a peace that will 5 
serve the several interests and immediate aims of the 
nations engaged. We shall have no voice in determining 
what those terms shall be, but we shall, I feel sure, have 
a voice in determining whether they shall be made lasting 
or not by the guarantees of a universal covenant; and 10 
our judgment upon what is fundamental and essential as 
a condition precedent to permanency should be spoken 
now, not afterwards when it may be too late. 

No covenant of cooperative peace that does not include 
the peoples of the New World can suffice to keep the 15 
future safe against war; and yet there is only one sort of 
peace that the peoples of America could join in guaran- 
teeing. The elements of that peace must be elements 
that engage the confidence and satisfy the principles of 
the American governments, elements consistent with 20 
their political faith and with the practical convictions 
which the peoples of America have once for all embraced 
and undertaken to defend. 

I do not mean to say that any American government 
would throw any obstacle in the way of any terms of 25 
peace the governments now at war might agree upon, or 
seek to upset them when made, whatever they might be. 
I only take it for granted that mere terms of peace be- 
tween the belligerents will not satisfy even the belligerents 
themselves. Mere agreements may not make peace 30 
secure. It will be absolutely necessary that a force be 
created as a guarantor of the permanency of the settle- 
ment so much greater than the force of any nation now 
engaged or any alliance hitherto formed or projected 



21 8 Woodrow Wilson 

that no nation, no probable combination of nations could 
face or withstand it. If the peace presently to be made is 
to.endure, it must be a peace made secure by the organized 
major force of mankind. 
5 The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will 
determine whether it is a peace for which such a guarantee 
can be secured. The question upon which the whole future 
peace and policy of the world depends is this: Is the present 
war a struggle for a just and secure peace, or only for a 

lo new balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new 
balance of power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee, 
the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only a 
tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be, 
not a balance of power, but a community of power; not 

15 organized rivalries, but an organized common peace. 

Fortunately we have received very explicit assurances on 
this point. The statesmen of both of the groups of nations 
now arrayed against one another have said, in terms that 
could not be misinterpreted, that it was no part of the 

20 purpose they had in mind to crush their antagonists. But 
the implications of these assurances may not be equally 
clear to all, — ^may not be the same on both sides of the 
water. I think it will be serviceable if I attempt to set 
forth what we understand them to be. 

25 They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without 
victory. It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may 
be permitted to put my oa\ti interpretation upon it and 
that it may be understood that no other interpretation was 
in my thought. I am seeking only to face realities and to 

30 face them without soft concealments. Victory would 
mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed 
upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, 
under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a 
sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of 



The Terms of Peace 219 

peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quick- 
sand. Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace 
the very principle of which is equality and a common par- 
ticipation in a common benefit. The right state of mind, 
the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a s 
lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of 
territory or of racial and national allegiance. 

The equality of nations upon which peace must be 
founded if it is to last must be an equality of rights; the 
guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor imply a 10 
difference between big nations and small, between those 
that are powerful and those that are weak. Right must 
be based upon the common strength, not upon the in- 
dividual strength, of the nations upon whose concert peace 
will depend. Equality of territory or of resources there of 15 
course cannot be ; nor any other sort of equality not gained 
in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate development of the 
peoples themselves. But no one asks or expects anything 
more than an equality of rights. Mankind is looking now 
for freedom of life, not for equipoises of power. 20 

And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality 
of right among organized nations. No peace can last, or 
ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the 
principle that governments derive all their just powers 
from the consent of the governed, and that no right any- 25 
where exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to 
sovereignty as if they were property. I take it for granted, 
for instance, if I may venture upon a single example, that 
statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a 
united, independent, and autonomous Poland, and that 30 
henceforth inviolable security of life, of worship, and of in- 
dustrial and social development should be guaranteed to all 
peoples who have lived hitherto under the power of govern- 
ments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their own. 



220 ' Woodrow Wilson 

I speak of this, not because of any desire to exalt an 
abstract political principle which has always been held 
very dear by those who have sought to build up liberty in 
America, but for the same reason that I have spoken of 
5 the other conditions of peace w^hich seem to me clearly 
indispensable, — because I wish frankly to uncover realities. 
Any peace which does not recognize and accept this prin- 
ciple will inevitably be upset. It will not rest upon the 
affections or the convictions of mankind. The ferment of 

lo spirit of whole populations will fight subtly and constantly 
against it, and all the world will sympathize. The world 
can be at peace only if its life is stable, and there can be no 
stability where the will is in rebellion, where there is not 
tranquillity of spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom, and 

15 of right. 

So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now 
struggling towards a full development of its resources and 
of its powers should be assured a direct outlet to the great 
highways of the sea. Where this cannot be done by the 

20 cession of territory, it can no doubt be done by the neu- 
tralization of direct rights of way under the general guar- 
antee which will assure the peace itself. With a right 
comity of arrangement no nation need be shut away from 
free access to the open paths of the world's commerce. 

25 And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be 
free. The freedom of the seas is the sine qua non of peace, 
equality, and cooperation. No doubt a somewhat radical 
reconsideration of many of the rules of international prac- 
tice hitherto thought to be established may be necessary 

30 in order to make the seas indeed free and common in prac- 
tically all circumstances for the use of mankind, but the 
motive for such changes is convincing and compelling. 
There can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples of 
the world without them. The free, constant, unthreatened 



The Terms of Peace 221 

intercourse of nations is an essential part of the process of 
peace and of development. It need not be difficult either 
to define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the govern- 
ments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement 
concerning it. 5 

It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of 
naval armaments and the cooperation of the navies of 
the world in keeping the seas at once free and safe. And 
the question of limiting naval armaments opens the wider 
and perhaps more difficult question of the limitation 10 
of armies and of all programs of military preparation. 
Difficult and delicate as these questions are, they must 
be faced with the utmost candor and decided in a spirit of 
real accommodation if peace is to come with healing in its 
wings, and come to stay. Peace cannot be had without 15 
concession and sacrifice. There can be no sense of safety 
and equality among the nations if great preponderating 
armaments are henceforth to continue here and there to be 
built up and maintained. The statesmen of the world must 
plan for peace and nations must adjust and accommodate 20 
their policy to it as they have planned for war and made 
ready for pitiless contest and rivalry. The question of 
armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most imme- 
diately and intensely practical question connected with 
the future fortunes of nations and of mankind. 25 

I have spoken upon these great matters without reserve 
and with the utmost explicitness because it has seemed to 
me to be necessary if the world's yearning desire for peace 
was anywhere to find free voice and utterance. Perhaps 
I am the only person in high authority amongst all the 30 
peoples of the world who is at liberty to speak and hold 
nothing back. I am speaking as an individual, and yet I 
am speaking also, of course, as the responsible head of a 
great government, and I feel confident that I have said 



222 Woodrow Wilson 

what the people of the United States would wish me to 
say. May I not add that I hope and beUeve that I am in 
effect speaking for Uberals and friends of humanity in 
every nation and of every program of hberty? I 

5 would fain believe that I am speaking for the silent mass 
of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no place or 
opportunity to speak their real hearts out concerning the 
death and ruin they see to have come already upon the 
persons and the homes they hold most dear. 

TO And in holding out the expectation that the people and 
Government of the United States will join the other 
civilized nations of the world in guaranteeing the per- 
manence of peace upon such terms as I have named I 
speak with the greater boldness and confidence because it 

15 is clear to every man who can think that there is in this 
promise no breach in either our traditions or our policy as a 
nation, but a fulfilment, rather, of all that w^e have pro- 
fessed or striven for. 

I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with 

20 one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the 
doctrine of the world: that no nation should seek to extend 
its pohty over any other nation or people, but that every 
people should be left free to determine its own polity, its 
own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, un- 

25 afraid, the little along with the great and powerful. 

I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid en- 
tangling alliances which would draw them into competi- 
tions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish 
rivalry, and disturb their own afTairs with influences in- 

30 truded from without. There is no entangling alliance in a 
concert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense 
and with the same purpose all act in the common interest 
and are free to live their own lives under a common pro- 
tection. 



The Terms of Peace 223 

I am proposing government by the consent of the 
governed; that freedom of the seas which in international 
conference after conference representatives of the United 
States have urged with the eloquence of those who are the 
convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation of 5 
armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for 
order merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish 
violence. 

These are American principles, American policies. We 
could stand for no others. And they are also the principles 10 
and policies of forward looking men and women every- 
where, of every modern nation, of every enlightened com- 
munity. They are the principles of mankind and must pre- 
vail. 



MEETING GERMANY'S CHALLENGE 

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, 
February 3, 1917.] 

Gentlemen of the Congress : 

The Imperial German Government on the thirty-first 
of January announced to this Government and to the 
governments of the other neutral nations that on and 
5 after the first day of February, the present month, it 
would adopt a policy with regard to the use of submarines 
against all shipping seeking to pass through certain desig- 
nated areas of the high seas to which it is clearly my duty 
to call your attention. 

10 Let me remind the Congress that on the eighteenth of 
April last, in view of the sinking on the twenty-fourth of 
March of the cross-Channel passenger steamer Sussex by 
a German submarine, without summons or warning, and 
the consequent loss of the lives of several citizens of the 

15 United States who were passengers aboard her, this Gov- 
ernment addressed a note to the Imperial German Gov- 
ernment in which it made the following declaration : 

''If it is still the purpose of the Imperial Government to 
prosecute relentless and indiscriminate warfare against 

20 vessels of commerce by the use of submarines without 
regard to what the Government of the United States must 
consider the sacred and indisputable rules of international 
law and the universally recognized dictates of humanity, 
the Government of the United States is at last forced to 

25 the conclusion that there is but one course it can pursue. 
Unless the Imperial Government should now immediately 
declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods 

224 



Meeting Germany's Challenge ^25 

of submarine warfare against passenger and freight- 
carrying vessels, the Government of the United States 
can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with 
the German Empire altogether." 

In reply to this declaration the Imperial German Gov- 5 
ernment gave this Government the following assurance: 

"The German Government is prepared to do its utmost 
to confine the operations of war for the rest of its duration 
to the fighting forces of the belligerents, thereby also in- 
suring the freedom of the seas, a principle upon which 10 
the German Government believes, now as before, to be in 
agreement with the Government of the United States.^ 

"The German Government, guided by this idea, notifies 
the Government of the United States that the German 
naval forces have received the following orders: In ac- 15 
cordance with the general principles of visit and search 
and destruction of merchant vessels recognized by inter- 
national law, such vessels, both within and without the 
area declared as naval war zone, shall not be sunk without 
warning and without saving human lives, unless these 20 
ships attempt to escape or offer resistance. 

"But," it added, "neutrals cannot expect that Ger- 
many, forced to fight for her existence, shall, for the sake 
of neutral interest, restrict the use of an effective weapon 
if her enemy is permitted to continue to apply at will 25 
methods of warfare violating the rules of international 
law. Such a demand would be incompatible with the 
character of neutrality, and the German Government is 
convinced that the Government of the United States does 
not think of making such a demand, knowing that the 30 
Government of the United States has repeatedly de- 
clared that it is determined to restore the principle of the 
freedom of the seas, from whatever quarter it has been 
violated." 



226 Woodrow Wilson 

To this the Government of the United States replied 
on the eighth of May, accepting, of course, the assurances 
given, but adding, 

^'The Government of the United States feels it necessary 

5 to state that it takes it for granted that the Imperial 
German Government does not intend to imply that the 
maintenance of its newly announced policy is in any way 
contingent upon the course or result of diplomatic negotia- 
tions between the Government of the United States and 

10 any other belligerent Government, notwithstanding the 
fact that certain passages in the Imperial Government's 
note of the fourth instant might appear to be susceptible of 
that construction. In order, however, to avoid any pos- 
sible misunderstanding, the Government of the United 

15 States notifies the Imperial Government that it cannot 
for a moment entertain, much less discuss, a suggestion 
that respect by German naval authorities for the rights 
of citizens of the United States upon the high seas should 
in any way or in the slightest degree be made contingent 

20 upon the conduct of any other Government affecting the 

rights of neutrals and noncombatants. Responsibihty 

in such matters is single, not joint; absolute, not relative." 

To this note of the eighth of May the Imperial German 

Government made no reply. 

25 'On the thirty-first of January, the Wednesday of the 
present week, the German Ambassador handed to the 
Secretary of State, along with a formal note, a memoran- 
dum which contains the following statement: 

''The Imperial Government, therefore, does not doubt 

30 that the Government of the United States will under- 
stand the situation thus forced upon Germany by the 
Entente-Allies' brutal methods of war and by their deter- 
mination to destroy the Central Powers, and that the 
Government of the United States will further realize that 



Meeting Germany's Challenge 227 

the now openly disclosed intentions of the Entente-Allies 
give back to Germany the freedom of action which she 
reserved in her note addressed to the Government of 
the United States on May 4, 19 16. 

"Under these circumstances Germany will meet the 5 
illegal measures of her enemies by forcibly preventing after 
February i, 19 17, in a zone around Great Britain, France, 
Italy, and in the Eastern Mediterranean all navigation, 
that of neutrals included, from and to England and from 
and to France, etc., etc. All ships met within the zone 10 
will be sunk." 

I think that you will agree with me that, in view of 
this declaration, which suddenly and without prior intima- 
tion of any kind deliberately withdraws the solemn as- 
surance given in the Imperial Government's note of the 15 
fourth of May, 19 16, this Government has no alternative 
consistent with the dignity and honor of the United States 
but to take the course which, in its note of the eighteenth 
of April, 19 16, it announced that it would take in the event 
that the German Government did not declare and effect 20 
an abandonment of the methods of submarine warfare 
which it was then employing and to which it now pur- 
poses again to resort. 

I have, therefore, directed the Secretary of State to 
announce to His Excellency the German Ambassador 25 
that all diplomatic relations between the United States 
and the German Empire are severed, and that the Amer- 
ican Ambassador at Berlin will unmediately be with- 
drawn; and, in accordance with this decision, to hand to 
His Excellency his passports. 3° 

Notwithstanding this unexpected action of the German 
Government, this sudden and deeply deplorable renuncia- 
tion of its assurances, given this Government at one of 
the most critical moments of tension in the relations of the 



228 Woodrow Wilson 

two governments, I refuse to believe that it is the intention 
of the German authorities to do in fact what they have 
warned us they will feel at hberty to do. I cannot bring 
myself to believe that they will indeed pay no regard to 
5 the ancient friendship between their people and our own 
or to the solemn obligations which have been exchanged 
between them and destroy American ships and take the 
Hves of American citizens in the willful prosecution of the 
ruthless naval program they have announced their inten- 

lo tion to adopt. Only actual overt acts on their part can 
make me beUeve it even now. 

If this inveterate confidence on my part in the sobriety 
and prudent foresight of their purpose should unhappily 
prove unfounded; if American ships and American lives 

15 should in fact be sacrificed by their naval commanders in 
heedless contravention of the just and reasonable under- 
standings of international law and the obvious dictates 
of humanity, I shall take the hberty of coming again 
before the Congress, to ask that authority be given me 

20 to use any means that may be necessary for the protection 
of our seamen and our people in the prosecution of their 
peaceful and legitimate errands on the high seas. I can 
do nothing less. I take it for granted that all neutral 
governments will take the same course. 

25 We do not desire any hostile conflict with the Imperial 
German Government. We are the sincere friends of the 
German people and earnestly desire to remain at peace 
with the Government which speaks for them. We shall 
not believe that they are hostile to us unless and until 

30 we are obhged to believe it; and we purpose nothing 
more than the reasonable defense of the undoubted rights 
of our people. We wish to serve no selfish ends. We seek 
merely to stand true alike in thought and in action to the 
immemorial principles of our people which I sought to 



Meeting Germany's Challenge 229 

express in my address to the Senate only two weeks ago,^ 
seek merely to vindicate our right to liberty and justice 
and an unmolested life. These are the bases of peace, not 
war. God grant we may not be challenged to defend them 
by acts of wilful injustice on the part of the Government 
of Germany! 



REQUEST FOR AUTHORITY 

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, 
February 26, 191 7.] 

Gentlemen of the Congress: 

I have again asked the privilege of addressing you be- 
cause we are moving through critical times during which 
it seems to me to be my duty to keep in close touch with 

5 the Houses of Congress, so that neither counsel nor action 
shall run at cross purposes between us. 

On the third of February I officially informed you" of the 
sudden and unexpected action of the Imperial German 
Government in declaring its intention to disregard the 

10 promises it had made to this Government in April last and 
undertake immediate submarine operations against all 
commerce, whether of belligerents or of neutrals, that 
should seek to approach Great Britain and Ireland, the 
Atlantic coasts of Europe, or the harbors of the eastern 

15 Mediterranean, and to conduct those operations without 
regard to the established restrictions of international prac- 
tice, without regard to any considerations of humanity 
even which might interfere with their object. That policy 
was forthwith put into practice. It has now been in active 

20 execution for nearly four weeks. 

Its practical results are not yet fully disclosed. The 
commerce of other neutral nations is suffering severely, but 
not, perhaps, very much more severely than it was already 
suffering before the first of February, when the new 

25 policy of the Imperial Government was put into operation. 
We have asked the cooperation of the other neutral govern- 
ments to prevent these depredations, but so far none of 

230 



Request for Authority 231 

them has thought it wise to join us in any common course 
of action. Our own commerce has suffered, is suffering, 
rather in apprehension than in fact, rather because so 
many of our ships are timidly keeping to their home ports 
than because American ships have been sunk. 5 

Two American vessels have been sunk, the Housatonic 
and the Lyman M. Law. The case of the Housatonic, 
which was carrying food-stuffs consigned to a London 
firm, was essentially like the case of the Fry, in which, it 
will be recalled, the German Government admitted its 10 
liability for damages, and the lives of the crew, as in the 
case of the Fry, were safeguarded with reasonable care. 
The case of the Law, which was carrying lemon-box staves 
to Palermo, disclosed a ruthlessness of method which 
deserves grave condemnation, but was accompanied by no 15 
circumstances which might not have been expected at any 
time in connection with the use of the submarine against 
merchantmen as the German Government has used it. 

In sum, therefore, the situation we find ourselves in with 
regard to the actual conduct of the German submarine 20 
warfare against commerce and its effects upon our own 
ships and people is substantially the same that it was when 
I addressed you on the third of February, except for the 
tying up of our shipping in our own ports because of the 
unwillingness of our shipowners to risk their vessels at sea 25 
without insurance or adequate protection, and the very 
serious congestion of our commerce which has resulted, a 
congestion which is growing rapidly more and more serious 
every day. This in itself might presently accomplish, in 
effect, what the new German submarine orders were 30 
meant to accomplish, so far as we are concerned. We can 
only say, therefore, that the overt act which I have ven- 
tured to hope the German commanders would in fact avoid 
has not occurred. 



232 Woodrow Wilson 

But, while this is happily true, it must be admitted that 
there have been certain additional indications and ex- 
pressions of purpose on the part of the German press and 
the German authorities which have increased rather than 
5 lessened the impression that, if our ships and our people 
are spared, it will be because of fortunate circumstances or 
because the commanders of the German submarines which 
they may happen to encounter exercise an unexpected dis- 
cretion and restraint rather than because of the instruc- 

10 tions under which those commanders are acting. It would 
be foolish to deny that the situation is fraught with the 
gravest possibilities and dangers. No thoughtful man can 
fail to see that the necessity for definite action may come 
at any time, if we are in fact, and not in word merely, to 

15 defend our elementary rights as a neutral nation. It would 
be most imprudent to be unprepared. 

I cannot in such circumstances be unmindful of the 
fact that the expiration of the term of the present Congress 
is immediately at hand, by constitutional limitation; and 

20 that it would in all likelihood require an unusual length of 
time to assemble and organize the Congress which is to 
succeed it. I feel that I ought, in view of that fact, to 
obtain from you full and immediate assurance of the au- 
thority which I may need at any moment to exercise. No 

25 doubt I already possess that authority without special 
warrant of law, by the plain implication of my constitu- 
tional duties and powers; but I prefer, in the present 
circumstances, not to act upon general implication. I 
wish to feel that the authority and the power of the Con- 

30 gress are behind me in whatever it may become necessary 
for me to do. We are jointly the servants of the people and 
must act together and in their spirit, so far as we can divine 
and interpret it. 

No one doubts what it is our duty to do. We must de- 



Request for Authority 233 

fend our commerce and the Uves of our people in the 
midst of the present trying circumstances, with discretion 
but with clear and steadfast purpose. Only the method 
and the extent remain to be chosen, upon the occasion,^ if 
occasion should indeed arise. Since it has unhappily 5 
proved impossible to safeguard our neutral rights by 
diplomatic means against the unwarranted infringements 
they are suffering at the hands of Germany, there may be 
no recourse but to armed neutrality, which we shall know 
how to maintain and for which there is abundant American 10 
precedent. 

It is devoutly to be hoped that it will not be necessary to 
put armed force anywhere into action. The American 
people do not desire it, and our desire is not different from 
theirs. I am sure that they will understand the spirit in 15 
which I am now acting, the purpose I hold nearest my 
heart and would wish to exhibit in everything I do. I am 
anxious that the people of the nations at war also should 
understand and not mistrust us. I hope that I need give 
no further proofs and assurances than I have already given 20 
throughout nearly three years of anxious patience that I 
am the friend of peace and mean to preserve it for America 
so long as I am able. I am not now proposing or con- 
templating war or any steps that need lead to it. I merely 
request that you will accord me by your own vote and 25 
definite bestowal the means and the authority to safe- 
guard in practice the right of a great people who are at 
peace and. who are desirous of exercising none but the 
rights of peace to follow the pursuits of peace in quietness 
and good will,— rights recognized time out of mind by all 30 
the civilized nations of the world. No course of my choos- 
ing or of theirs will lead to war. War can come only by the 
wilful acts and aggressions of others. 

You will understand why I can make no definite pro- 



234 Woodrow Wilson 

posals or forecasts of action now and must ask for your 
supporting authority in the most general terms. The form 
in which action may become necessary cannot yet be 
foreseen. I believe that the people will be willing to trust 

5 me to act with restraint, with prudence, and in the true 
spirit of amity and good faith that they have themselves 
displayed throughout these trying months; and it is in that 
belief that I request that you will authorize me to supply 
our merchant ships with defensive arms, should that be- 

lo come necessary, and with the means of using them, and to 
employ any other instrumentahties or methods that may 
be necessary and adequate to protect our ships and our 
people in their legitimate and peaceful pursuits on the 
seas. I request also that you will grant me at the same 

15 time, along with the powers I ask, a sufficient credit to 
enable me to provide adequate means of protection w^here 
they are lacking, including adequate insurance against 
the present war risks. 

I have spoken of our commerce and of the legitimate er- 

20 rands of our people on the seas, but you will not be misled 
as to my main thought, the thought that lies beneath 
these phrases and gives them dignity and weight. It is not 
of material interests merely that we are thinking. It is, 
rather, of fundamental human rights, chief of all the right 

25 of life itself. I am thinking, not only of the rights of 
Americans to go and come about their proper business by 
way of the sea, but also of something much deeper, much 
more fundamental than that. I am thinking of those 
rights of humanity without which there is no civilization. 

30 My theme is of those great principles of compassion and of 
protection which mankind has sought to throw about 
human lives, the lives of non-combatants, the lives of men 
who are peacefully at work keeping the industrial processes 
of the world quick and vital, the lives of women and 



Request for Authority 235 

children and of those who supply the labor which ministers 
to their sustenance. We are speaking of no selfish material 
rights but of rights which our hearts support and whose 
foundation is that righteous passion for justice upon which 
all law, all structures alike of family, of state, and of man- 
kind must rest, as upon the ultimate base of our existence 
and our liberty. I cannot imagine any man with American 
principles at his heart hesitating to defend these things. 



SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

[Washington, March 4, 1917-] 

My Fellow-Citizens: 

The four years which have elapsed since last I stood in 
this place have been crowded with counsel and action of 
the most vital interest and consequence. Perhaps no 

5 equal period in our history has been so fruitful of impor- 
tant reforms in our economic and industrial life or so full 
of significant changes in the spirit and purpose of our 
political action. We have sought very thoughtfully to 
set our house in order, correct the grosser errors and abuses 

10 of our industrial life, liberate and quicken the processes 
of our national genius and energy, and lift our politics to 
a broader view of the people's essential interests. It is a 
record of singular variety and singular distinction. But 
I shall not attempt to review it. It speaks for itself and 

15 will be of increasing influence as the years go by. This is 
not the time for retrospect. It is time, rather, to speak 
our thoughts and purposes concerning the present and the 
immediate future. 

Although we have centered counsel and action with 

20 such unusual concentration arid success upon the great 
problems of domestic legislation to which we addressed 
ourselves four years ago, other matters have more and 
more forced themselves upon our attention, matters lying 
outside our own life as a nation and over which we had 

25 no control, but which, despite our wish to keep free of 
them, have drawn us more and more irresistibly into 
their own current and influence. 
It has been impossible to avoid them. They have af- 

236 



Second Inaugural Address 237 

fected the life of the whole world. They have shaken 
men everywhere with a passion and an apprehension they 
never knew before. It has been hard to preserve calm 
counsel while the thought of our own people swayed this 
way and that under their influence. We are a composite 5 
and cosmopoHtan people. We are of the blood of all the 
nations that are at war. The currents of our thoughts as 
well as the currents of our trade run quick at all seasons 
back and forth between us and them. The war inevitably 
set its mark from the first alike upon our minds, our in- 10 
dustries, our commerce, our politics, and our social action. 
To be indifferent to it or independent of it was out of the 
question. 

And yet all the while we have been conscious that we 
were not part of it. In that consciousness, despite many 15 
divisions, we have drawn closer together. We have been 
deeply wTonged upon the seas, but we have not wished to 
wrong or injure in return; have retained throughout the 
consciousness of standing in some sort apart, intent upon 
an interest that transcended the immediate issues of the 20 
war itself. As some of the injuries done us have become 
intolerable we have still been clear that we wished noth- 
ing for ourselves that we were not ready to demand for all 
mankind,— fair dealing, justice, the freedom to live and 
be at ease against organized wrong. 25 

It is in this spirit and with this thought that we have 
grown more and more aw^are, more and more certain that 
the part we wished to play was the part of those who mean 
to vindicate and fortify peace. We have been obliged to 
arm ourselves to make good our claim to a certain mini- 30 
mum of right and of freedom of action. We stand firm 
in armed neutrality since it seems that in no other way 
we can demonstrate what it is we insist upon and cannot 
forego. We may even be drawn on, by circumstances, not 



238 Woodrow Wilson 

by our own purpose or desire, to a more active assertion 
of our rights as we see them and a more immediate asso- 
ciation with the great struggle itself. But nothing will 
alter our thought or our purpose. They are too clear to 
5 be obscured. They are too deeply rooted in the principles 
of our national life to be altered. We desire neither con- 
quest nor advantage. We wish nothing that can be had 
only at the cost of another people. We have always pro- 
fessed unselfish purpose and we covet the opportunity to 

10 prove that our professions are sincere. 

There are many things still to do at home, to clarify 
our own politics and give new vitality to the industrial 
processes of our own life, and we shall do them as time 
and opportunity serve; but we realize that the greatest 

15 things that remain to be done must be done with the 
whole world for stage and in cooperation with the wide 
and universal forces of mankind, and we are making our 
spirits ready for those things. They will follow in the 
immediate wake of the war itself and will set civilization 

20 up again. We are provincials no longer. The tragical 
events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which 
we have Just passed have made us citizens of the world. 
There can be no turning back. Our own fortunes as a 
nation are involved, whether we would have it so or 

25 not. 

And yet we are not the less Americans on that account. 
We shall be the more American if we but remain true to 
the principles in which we have been bred. They are not 
the principles of a province or of a single continent. We 

30 have known and boasted all along that they were the 
principles of a liberated mankind. These, therefore, are 
the things we shall stand for, whether in war or in 
peace: 

That all nations are equally interested in the peace of 



Second Inaugural Address 239 

the world and in the political stability of free peoples, and 
equally responsible for their maintenance; 

That the essential principle of peace is the actual equal- 
ity of nations in all matters of right or privilege; 

That peace cannot securely or justly rest upon an armed 5 
balance of power; 

That governments derive all their Just powers from the 
consent of the governed and that no other powers should 
be supported by the common thought, purpose, or power 
of the family of nations, 10 

That the seas should be equally free and safe for the use 
of all peoples, under rules set up by common agreement 
and consent, and that, so far as practicable, they should 
be accessible to all upon equal terms; 

That national armaments should be limited to the 15 
necessities of national order and domestic safety; 

That the community of interest and of power upon 
which peace must henceforth depend imposes upon each 
nation the duty of seeing to it that all influences proceed- 
ing from its own citizens meant to encourage or assist 20 
revolution in other states should be sternly and effectually 
suppressed and prevented. 

I need not argue these principles to you, my fellow- 
countrymen: they are your own, part and parcel of your 
own thinking and your own motive in affairs. They spring 25 
up native amongst us. Upon this as a platform of pur^^ose 
and of action we can stand together. 

And it is imperative that we should stand together. 
We are being forged into a new unity amidst the fires that 
now blaze throughout the world. In their ardent heat 30 
we shall, in God's providence, let us hope, be purged of 
faction and division, purified of the errant humors of 
party and of private interest, and shall stand forth in the 
days to come with a new dignity of national pride and 



240 Woodrow Wilson 

spirit. Let each man see to it that the dedication is in 
his own heart, the high purpose of the Nation in his own 
mind, ruler of his own will and desire. 

I stand here and have taken the high and solemn oath 
5 to which you have been audience because the people of 
the United States have chosen me for this august delega- 
tion of power and have by their gracious judgment named 
me their leader in affairs. I know now what the task 
means. I realize to the full the responsibility which it 

10 involves. I pray God I may be given the wisdom and 
the prudence to do my duty in the true spirit of this great 
people. I am their servant and can succeed only as they 
sustain and guide me by their confidence and their counsel. 
The thing I shall count upon, the thing without which 

15 neither counsel nor action will avail, is the unity of Amer- 
ica, — an America united in feeling, in purpose, and in its 
vision of duty, of opportunity, and of service. We are to 
beware of all men who would turn the tasks and the 
necessities of the Nation to their own private profit or 

20 use them for the building up of private power; beware 
that no faction or disloyal intrigue break the harmony or 
embarrass the spirit of our people; beware that our Gov- 
ernment be kept pure and incorrupt in all its parts. United 
alike in the conception of our duty and in the high resolve 

25 to perform it in the face of all men, let us dedicate our- 
selves to the great task to which we must now set our 
hand. For myself I beg your tolerance, your countenance, 
and your united aid. The shadows that now lie dark 
upon our path will soon be dispelled and we shall walk 

30 with the light all about us if we be but true to ourselves, — 
to ourselves as we have wished to be known in the coun- 
sels of the world and in the thought of all those who love 
liberty and justice and the right exalted. 



THE CALL TO WAR 

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, 
April 2, 1917.] 

Gentlemen of the Congress: 

I have called the Congress into extraordinary session 
because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to 
be made, and made immediately, which it was neither 
right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume 5 
the responsibihty of making. 

On the third of February last I officially laid before you 
the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German 
Government that on and after the first day of February it 
was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of 10 
humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that 
sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and 
Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports 
controlled by the enemies.of Germany within the Mediter- 
ranean. That had seemed to be the object of the German 15 
submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of 
last year the Imperial Government had somewhat re- 
strained the commanders of its undersea craft in con- 
formity with its promise then given to us that passenger 
boats should not be sunk and that due warning would be 20 
given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek 
to destroy, when no resistance was offered or escape at- 
tempted, and care taken that their crews were given at 
least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. 
The precautions taken were meager and haphazard enough, 25 
as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the 
progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain 

241 



242 Woodrow Wilson 

degree of restraint was observed. The new policy has 
swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, what- 
ever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destina- 
tion, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom 

5 without warning and without thought of help or mercy for 
those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with 
those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carry- 
ing relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of 
Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe 

10 conduct through the proscribed areas by the German 
Government itself and were distinguished by unmis- 
takable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same 
reckless lack of compassion or of principle. 

I was for a little while unable to believe that such things 

15 would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto 

subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. 

International law had its origin in. the attempt to set up 

• some law which would be respected and observed upon 

the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where 

20 lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage after 
stage has that law been built-up, with meager enough 
results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be 
accompHshed, but always with a clear view, at least, of 
what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded. 

25 This minimum of right the German Government has 
swept aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity and 
because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except 
these which it is impossible to employ as it is employing 
them without throwing to the winds all scruples of hu- 

30 manity or of respect for the understandings that were sup- 
posed to underhe the intercourse of the world. I am not 
now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and 
serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale 
destruction of the lives of non-combatants, men, women, 



The Call to War 243 

and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even 
in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed 
innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the 
hves of peaceful and innocent people cannot be. The 
present German submarine warfare against commerce is a 5 
warfare against mankind. 

It is a war against all nations. American ships have 
been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has 
stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people 
of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and 10 
overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has 
been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. 
Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. 
The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a 
moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment 15 
befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We 
must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be 
revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might 
of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human 
right, of which we are only a single champion. 20 

When I addressed the Congress on the twenty-sixth of 
February last I thought that it would suffice to assert our 
neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against 
unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe 
against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now 25 
appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in 
effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have 
been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to 
defend ships against their attacks as the law of nations 
has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves 30 
against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase 
upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such cir- 
cumstances, grim necessity indeed, to endeavor to destroy 
them before they have shown their own intention. They 



244 Woodrow Wilson 

must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. The 
German Government denies the right of neutrals to use 
arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has pro- 
scribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern 
5 publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend. 
The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which 
we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as 
beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as 
pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough 

10 at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such 
pretensions it is worse than ineffectual: it is likely only to 
produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically 
certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or 
the effectiveness of belligerents. There is one choice we 

15 cannot make, we are incapable of making: we will not 
choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred 
rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or vio- 
lated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves 
are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of 

20 human life. 

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical 
character of the step I am taking and of the grave re- 
sponsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obe- 
dience to what I deem my constitutional dut}^, I advise 

25 that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial 
German Government to be in fact nothing less than war 
against the government and people of the United States; 
that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has 
thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps 

30 not only to put the country in a more thorough state of 

defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its 

resources to bring the Government of the German Empire 

to terms and end the war. 

What this will involve is clear. It will involve the ut- 



The Call to War 245 

most practicable cooperation in counsel and action with 
the governments now at war with Germany, and, as inci- 
dent to that, the extension to those governments of the 
most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources 
may so far as possible be added to theirs. It will involve 5 
the organization and mobilization of all the material re- 
sources of the country to supply the materials of war and 
serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most 
abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way 
possible. It will involve the immediate full equipment of 10 
the navy in all respects but particularly in supplying it 
with the best means of dealing with the enemy's sub- 
marines. It will involve the immediate addition to the 
armed forces of the United States already provided for by 
law in case of war at least 500,000 men, who should, in my 15 
opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability 
to service, and also the authorization of subsequent addi- 
tional increments of equal force so soon as they may be 
needed and can be handled in training. It will involve 
also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to the 20 
Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equita- 
bly be sustained by the present generation, by well con- 
ceived taxation. 

I say sustained so far as may be equitable by taxation 
because it seems to me that it would be most unwise to base 25 
the credits which will now be necessary entirely on money 
borrowed. It is our duty, I most respectfully urge, to 
protect our people so far as we may against the very 
serious hardships and evils which would be likely to arise 
out of the inflation which would be produced by vast 30 
loans. 

In carrying out the measures by which these things are 
to be accompHshed we should keep constantly in mind the 
wisdom of interfermg as Uttle as possible in our own 



246 Wood row Wilson 

preparation and in the equipment of our own military 
forces with the duty, — for it will be a very practical duty, — 
of supplying the nations already at war with Germany 
with the materials which they can obtain only from us or 
5 by our assistance. They are in the field and we should 
help them in every way to be effective there. 

I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through the 
several executive departments of the Government, for the 
consideration of your committees, measures for the ac- 

10 complishment of the several objects I have mentioned. I 
hope that it will be your pleasure to deal with them as 
having been framed after very careful thought by the 
branch of the Government upon which the responsibility of 
conducting the war and safeguarding the nation will most 

15 directly fall. 

While we do these things, these deeply momentous 
things, let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the 
world what our motives and our objects are. My own 
thought has not been driven from its habitual and normal 

20 course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and 
I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been 
altered or clouded by them. I have exactly the same 
things in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed 
the Senate on the twenty-second of January last; the same 

25 that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the 
third of February and on the twenty-sixth of February. 
Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of 
peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish 
and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free 

30 and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of 
purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the ob- 
servance of those principles. Neutrality is no longer 
feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is in- 
volved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to 



The Call to War 247 

that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic 
governments backed by organized force which is controlled 
wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We 
have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. We 
are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted 5 
that the same standards of conduct and of responsibihty 
for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their 
governments that are observed among the individual 
citizens of civilized states. 

We have no quarrel with the German people. We have 10 
no feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friend- 
ship. It was not upon their impulse that their govern- 
ment acted in entering this war. It was not with their 
previous knowledge or approval. It was a war deter- 
mined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the 15 
old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted 
by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in 
the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious 
men who were accustomed to use their fellow-men as 
pawns and tools. Self-governed nations do not fill their 20 
neighbor states with spies or set the course of intrigue to 
bring about some critical posture of affairs which will 
give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. 
Such designs can be successfully worked out only under 
cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. 25 
Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, 
carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be 
worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy 
of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a 
narrow and privileged class. They are happily impossible 30 
where public opinion commands and insists upon full in- 
formation concerning all the nation's affairs. 

•A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained 
except by a partnership of democratic nations. No auto- 



248 Woodrow Wilson 

cratic government could be trusted to keep faith within 
it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor, 
a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals 
away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what 

5 they would and render account to no one would be a cor- 
ruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can 
hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common 
end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow 
interest of their owti. 

10 Does not every American feel that assurance has been 
added to our hope for the future peace of the world by 
the wonderful and heartening things that have been hap- 
pening within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was 
known by those who knew it best to have been always in 

15 fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her 
thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people 
that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude 
towards life. The autocracy that crowned the summit 
of her poHtical structure, long as it had stood and terrible 

20 as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian 
in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been 
shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have 
been added in all their naive majesty and might to the 
forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for jus- 

25 tice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a League of 
Honor. 

One of the things that has served to convince us that 
the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our 
friend is that from the very outset of the present war it 

30 has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our 
offices of government with spies and set criminal intrigues 
everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, 
our peace within and without, our industries and our com- 
merce. Indeed it is now evident that its spies were here 



The Call to War 249 

even before the war began; and it is unhappily not a 
matter of conjecture but a fact proved in our courts of 
justice that the intrigues which have more than once come 
perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating 
the industries of the country have been carried on at the 5 
instigation, with the support, and even under the personal 
direction of official agents of the Imperial Government 
accredited to the Government of the United States. Even 
in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we 
have sought to put the most generous interpretation pos- 10 
sible upon them because we knew that their source lay, 
not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people 
towards us (who were, no doubt as ignorant of them as we 
ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a Gov- 
ernment that did what it pleased and told its people noth- 15 
ing. But they have played their part in serving to con- 
vince us at last that that Government entertains no real 
friendship for us and means to act against our peace and 
security at its convenience. That it means to stir up ene- 
mies against us at our very doors the intercepted note to 20 
the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence. 
We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose be- 
cause we know that in such a government, following such 
methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the 
presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to 25 
accompHsh we know not what purpose, there can be no 
assured security for the democratic governments of the 
world. We are now about to accept gauge of battle with 
this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the 
whole force of the nation to check and nullify its preten- 30 
sions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the 
facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus 
for the ultunate peace of the world and for the liberation 
of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights 



250 Woodrow Wilson 

of nations great and small and the privilege of men every- 
where to choose their way of life and of obedience. The 
world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must 
be planted upon the tested foundations of poHtical liberty. 

5 We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, 
no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no 
material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely 
make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of 
mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have 

10 been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of na- 
tions can make them. 

Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish 
object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall 
wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel con- 

15 fident, conduct our operations as belligerents without pas- 
sion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the prin- 
ciples of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for. 
I have said nothing of the governments allied with the 
Imperial Government of Germany because they have not 

20 made war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and 
our honor. The Austro-Hungarian Government has, in- 
deed, avowed its unqualified endorsement and acceptance 
of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare adopted 
now without disguise by the Imperial German Govern- 

25 ment, and it has therefore not been possible for this Gov- 
ernment to receive Count Tarnowski, the Ambassador 
recently accredited to this Government by the Imperial 
and Royal Government of Austria-Hungary; but that 
Government has not actually engaged in warfare against 

30 citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take the 
liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a discussion 
of our relations with the authorities at Vienna. We enter 
this war only where we are clearly forced into it because 
there are no other means of defending our rights. 



• The Call to War 251 

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as 
belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because 
we act without animus, not in enmity towards a people 
or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage 
upon them, but only in armed opposition to an jrrespon- 5 
sible government which has thrown aside all considera- 
tions of humanity and of right and is running amuck. 
We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the Ger- 
man people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early 
reestabHshment of intimate relations of mutual advan- 10 
tage between us,— however hard it may be for them, for 
the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our 
hearts. We have borne with their present government 
through all these bitter months because of that friend- 
ships—exercising a patience and forbearance which would 15 
otherwise have been impossible. We shall, happily, still 
have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily 
attitude and actions towards the millions of men and 
women of German birth and native sympathy who live 
amongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to 20 
prove it towards all who are in fact loyal to their neighbors 
and to the Government in the hour of test. They are, 
most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had 
never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will 
be prompt to stand wdth us in rebuking and restraining 25 
the few who may be of a different mind and purpose. If 
there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm 
hand of stern repression; but, if it hfts its head at all, it 
will lift it only here and there and without countenance 
except from a lawless and malignant few. 30 

It is a distressing and oppressive duty. Gentlemen of 
the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing 
you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial 
and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this 



252 Wood row Wilson 

great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and 
disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in 
the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, 
and we shall fight for the things which we have always 

5 carried nearest our hearts,— for democracy, for the right 
of those* who submit to authority to have a voice in their 
own governments, for the rights and liberties of small 
nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a con- 
cert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all 

10 nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a 
task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, every- 
thing that we are and everything that we have, with the 
pride of those who know that the day has come when 
America is privileged to spend her blood and her might 

15 for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and 
the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she 
can do no other. 



TO THE COUNTRY 

[President Wilson's Address to his Fellow-Countrymen, April i6, 
1917.] 

My Fellow-Countrymen: 

The entrance of our own beloved country into the grim 
and terrible war for democracy and human rights which 
has shaken the world creates so many problems of na- 
tional life and action which call for immediate considera- 5 
tion and settlement that I hope you will permit me to 
address to you a few words of earnest counsel and appeal 
with regard to them. 

We are rapidly putting our navy upon an effective w^ar 
footing and are about to create and equip a great army, 10 
but these are the simplest parts of the great task to which 
yve have addressed ourselves. There is not a single selfish 
element, so far as I can see, in the cause we are fighting 
for. We are fighting for what we believe and wish to be 
the rights of mankind and for the future peace and security 15 
of the world. To do this great thing worthily and success- 
fully we must devote ourselves to the service without 
regard to profit or material advantage and with an energy 
and intelligence that will rise to the level of the enterprise 
itself. We must realize to the full how great the task is 20 
and how many things, how many kinds and elements of 
capacity and service and self-sacrifice, it involves. 

These, then, are the things we must do, and do well, 
besides fighting, — the things without which mere fighting 
would be fruitless: 25 

We must supply abundant food for ourselves and for our 
armies and our seamen not only, but also for a large part 

253 



254 Woodrow Wilson 

of the nations with whom we have now made common 
cause, in whose support and by whose sides we shall be 
fighting. 

We must supply ships by the hundreds out of our ship- 
5 yards to carry to the other side of the sea, submarines or no 
submarines, what wdll every day be needed there, and 
abundant materials out of our fields and our mines and our 
factories with which not only to clothe and equip our own 
forces on land and sea but also to clothe and support our 

10 people for whom the gallant fellows under arms can no 
longer work, to help clothe and equip the armies with 
which we are cooperating in Europe, and to keep the 
looms and manufactories there in raw material; coal to 
keep the fires going in ships at sea and in the furnaces of 

15 hundreds of factories across the sea; steel out of w^hich to 
make arms and ammunition both here and there; rails for 
worn-out railways back of the fighting fronts; locomotives 
and rolling stock to take the place of those every day going 
to pieces; mules, horses, cattle for labor and for military 

20 service; everything with which the people of England and 
France and Italy and Russia have usually supplied them- 
selves but cannot now afford the men, the materials, or 
the machinery to make. 

It is evident to every thinking man that our industries, 

25 on the farms, in the shipyards, in the mines, in the fac- 
tories, must be made more prolific and more cflicient than 
ever and that they must be more economically managed 
and better adapted to the particular requirements of our 
task than they have been; and what I want to say is that 

30 the men and the women who devote their thought and their 
energy to these things will be serving the country and 
conducting the fight for peace and freedom just as truly 
and just as effectively as the men on the battlefield or in 
the trenches. The industrial forces of the country, men 



To the Country 255 

and women alike, will be a great national, a great inter- 
national, Service Army, — a notable and honored host 
engaged in the service of the nation and the world, the 
efficient friends and saviors of free men everywhere. Thou- 
sands, nay, hundreds of thousands, of men otherwise liable 5 
to military service will of right and of necessity be excused 
from that service and assigned to the fundamental, sus- 
taining work of the fields and factories and mines, and 
they will be as much part of the great patriotic forces of 
the nation as the men under fire. 10 

I take the liberty, therefore, of addressing this word to 
the farmers of the country and to all who work on the 
farms: The supreme need of our own nation and of the 
nations with which we are cooperating is an abundance of 
supplies, and especially of food-stuffs. The importance of 15 
an adequate food supply, especially for the present year, is 
superlative. Without abundant food, alike for the armies 
and the peoples now at war, the whole great enterprise 
upon which we have embarked will break down and fail. 
The world's food reserves are low. Not only during the 20 
present emergency but for some time after peace shall 
have come both our own people and a large proportion of 
the people of Europe must rely upon the harvests in 
America. Upon the farmers of this country, therefore, in 
large measure, rests the fate of the war and the fate of the 25 
nations. May the nation not count upon them to omit 
no step that will increase the production of their land or 
that will bring about the most effectual cooperation in the 
sale and distribution of their products? The time is 
short. It is of the most imperative importance that 30 
everything possible be done and done immediately to make 
sure of large harvests. I call upon young men and old 
alike and upon the able-bodied boys of the land to accept 
and act upon this duty — to turn in hosts to the farms and 



256 Woodrow Wilson 

make certain that no pains and no labor is lacking in this 
great matter. 

I particularly appeal to the farmers of the South to 
plant abundant food-stuffs as well as cotton. They can 

5 show their patriotism in no better or more convincing 
way than by resisting the great temptation of the present 
price of cotton and helping, helping upon a great scale, to 
feed the nation and the peoples everywhere who are fight- 
ing for their liberties and for our own. The variety of 

10 their crops will be the visible measure of their comprehen- 
sion of their national duty. 

The Government of the United States and the govern- 
ments of the several States stand ready to cooperate. 
They will do everything possible to assist farmers in secur- 

15 ing an adequate supply of seed, an adequate force of 
laborers when they are most needed, at harvest time, and 
the means of expediting shipments of fertilizers and farm 
machinery, as well as of the crops themselves when har- 
vested. The course of trade shall be as unhampered as it 

20 is possible to make it and there shall be no unwarranted 
manipulation of the nation's food supply by those who 
handle it on its way to the consumer. This is our oppor- 
tunity to demonstrate the efl&ciency of a great Democracy 
and we shall not fall short of it! 

25 This let me say to the middlemen of every sort, whether 
they are handling our food-stuffs or our raw materials of 
manufacture or the products of our mills and factories: 
The eyes of the country will be especially upon you. This 
is your opportunity for signal ser^-ice, efficient and dis- 

30 interested. The country expects you, as it expects all 
others, to forego unusual profits, to organize and expedite 
shipments of supplies of every kind, but especially of food, 
with an eye to the service you are rendering and in the 
spirit of those who enlist in the ranks, for their people, not 



To the Country 257 

for themselves. I shall confidently expect you to deserve 
and win the confidence of people of every sort and station. 
To the men who run the railways of the country, whether 
they be managers or operative employees, let me say that 
the railways are the arteries of the nation's life and that 5 
upon them rests the immense responsibility of seeing to it 
that those arteries suffer no obstruction of any kind, no 
inefficiency or slackened power. To the merchant let 
me suggest the motto, ''Small profits and quick service"; 
and to the shipbuilder the thought that the life of the war 10 
depends upon him. The food and the war supplies must be 
carried across the seas no matter how many ships are sent 
to the bottom. The places of those that go down must be 
supplied and supplied at once. To the miner let me say 
that he stands where the farmer does: the work of the 15 
world waits on him. If he slackens or fails, armies and 
statesmen are helpless. He also is enlisted in the great 
Service Army. The manufacturer does not need to be 
told, I hope, that the nation looks to him to speed and 
perfect every process; and I want only to remind his em- 20 
ployees that their service is absolutely indispensable and 
is counted on by every man who loves the country and its 
liberties. 

Let me suggest, also, that everyone who creates or 
cultivates a garden helps, and helps greatly, to solve the 25 
problem of the feeding of the nations; and that every 
housewife who practices strict economy puts herself in the 
ranks of those who serve the nation. This is the time for 
America to correct her unpardonable fault of wastefulness 
and extravagance. Let every man and every woman as- 30 
sume the duty of careful, provident use and expenditure as 
a public duty, as a dictate of patriotism which no one can 
now expect ever to be excused or forgiven for ignoring. 
In the hope that this statement of the needs of the na- 



258 Wood row Wilson 

tion and of the world in this hour of supreme crisis may 
stimulate those to whom it comes and remind all who need 
reminder of the solemn duties of a time such as the world 
has never seen before, I beg that all editors and pub- 

5 Ushers everywhere will give as prominent publication and 
as wide circulation as possible to this appeal. I venture to 
suggest, also, to all advertising agencies that they would 
perhaps render a very substantial and timely service to the 
country if they would give it widespread repetition. And 

10 I hope that clergymen will not think the theme of it an 
unworthy or inappropriate subject of comment and homily 
from their pulpits. 

The supreme test of the nation has come. We must all 
speak, act, and serve together! 

WOODROW WILSON. 



THE GERMAN PLOT 

[Speech in Washington Monument Grounds, June 14, 19 17.] 

We know now clearly, as we knew before we ourselves 
were engaged in the War, that we are not enemies of the 
German people, and they are not our enemies. They did 
not originate, or desire, this hideous war, or wish that 
we should be drawn into it, and we are vaguely conscious 5 
that we are fighting their cause, as they will some day 
see it themselves, as well as our own. They themselves 
are in the grip of the same sinister power that has stretched 
its ugly talons out and drawn blood from us. 

The War was begun by the military masters of Ger- 10 
many, who have proved themselves to be also the masters 
of Austria-Hungary. These men never regarded nations 
as peoples of men, women, and children of like blood and 
frame as themselves, for whom Governments existed and 
in whom Governments had their life. They regarded them 15 
merely as serviceable organizations, which they could, 
either by force or intrigue, bend or corrupt to their own 
purpose. They regarded the smaller States, particularly, 
and those peoples, who could be overwhelmed by force, 
as their natural tools and instruments of domination. 20 

Their purpose had long been avowed. The statesmen 
of other nations, to whom that purpose was incredible, 
paid little attention, and regarded what the German pro- 
fessors expounded in their class-rooms and the German 
writers set forth to the world as the goal of German policy 25 
as rather the dream of minds detached from practical 
affairs and the preposterous private conceptions of Ger- 
many's destiny than the actual plans of responsible rulers. 

259 



26o Wood row Wilson 

But the rulers of Germany knew all the while what con- 
crete plans, what well-advanced intrigue, lay at the back 
of what professors and writers were saying, and were 
glad to go forward unmolested, filling the thrones of the 

5 Balkan States with German princes, putting German 
officers at the service of Turkey, developing plans of sedi- 
tion and rebellion in India and Egypt, and setting their 
fires in Persia. 

The demands made by Austria upon Serbia were a mere 

lo single step in the plan which compassed Europe and Asia 
from Berlin to Bagdad. They hoped that these demands 
might not arouse Europe, but they meant to press them, 
whether they did or not. For they thought themselves 
ready for the final issue of arms. Their plan was to throw 

15 a belt of German military power and political control 
across the very center of Europe and beyond the Mediter- 
ranean into the heart of Asia, and Austria-Hungar}^ was 
to be as much their tool and pawn as Serbia, Bulgaria, 
Turkey, or the ponderous States of the East. Austria- 

20 Hungary, indeed, was to become a part of the Central 
German Empire, absorbed and dominated by the same 
forces and influences that originally cemented the German 
States themselves. 

The dream had its heart at Berlin. It could have had 

25 its heart nowhere else. It rejected entirely the idea of the 
solidarity of race. The choice of peoples played no part 
at all in the contemplated binding together of the racial 
and political units, which could keep together only by 
force. And they actually carried the greater part of that 

30 amazing plan into execution. 

Look how things stand. Austria, at their mercy, has 
acted, not upon its own initiative or upon the choice of 
its own people, but at Berlin's dictation ever since the 
War began. Its people now desire peace, but they can- 



The German Plot 261 

not have it until leave is granted from Berlin. The so- 
called Central Powers are, in fact, but a single Power. 
Serbia is at its mercy should its hand be but for a moment 
freed; Bulgaria consented to its will; Rumania is overrun 
by the Turkish armies, which the Germans trained into 5 
serving Germany, and the guns of the German warships 
lying in the harbor at Constantinople remind the Turkish 
statesmen every day that they have no choice but to take 
their orders from Berlin. 

From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf the net is spread. 10 
Is it not easy to understand the eagerness for peace that 
has been manifested by Berlin ever since the snare was 
set and sprung? "Peace, peace, peace" has been the talk 
of her Foreign Office for a year or more, not peace upon 
her own initiative, but upon the initiative of the nations 15 
over which she now deems herself to hold the advantage. 
A little of the talk has been pubhc, but most of it has been 
private, through all sorts of channels. It has come to me 
in all sorts of guises, but never with the terms disclosed 
which the German Government would be willing to accept. 20 

That Government has other valuable pawns in its hands 
besides those I have mentioned. It still holds a valuable 
part of France, though with a slowly relaxing grasp, and 
practically the whole of Belgium. Its armies press close 
on Russia and overrun Poland. It cannot go farther— it 25 
dare not go back. It wishes to close its bargain before it 
is too late and it has little left to offer for the pound of 
flesh it will demand. The military masters under whom 
Germany is bleeding see very clearly to what point fate 
has brought them: if they fall back or are forced back an 30 
inch, their power abroad and at home will fall to pieces. 
It is their power at home of which they are thinking now 
more than of their power abroad. It is that power wtich 
is trembling under their very feet. 



262 Wood row Wilson 

Deep fear has entered their hearts. They have but one 
chance to perpetuate their military power, or even their 
controlUng political influence. If they can secure peace 
now, with the immense advantage still in their hands, 

5 they will have justified themselves before the German 
people. They will have gained by force what they 
promised to gain by it — an immense expansion of German 
power and an immense enlargement of German industrial 
and commercial opportunities. Their prestige will be 

10 secure, and with their prestige their political power. 

If they fail, their people will thrust them aside. A 
Government accountable to the people themselves will 
be set up in Germany, as has been the case in England, the 
United States, and France — in all great countries of mod- 

15 ern times except Germany. If they succeed they are safe, 
and Germany and the world are undone. If they fail, 
Germany is saved and the world will be at peace. If they 
succeed, America will fall wdthin the menace, and we, and 
all the rest of the world, must remain armed, as they will 

20 remain, and must make ready for the next step in their 
aggression. If they fail, the world may unite for peace 
and Germany may be of the union. 

Do you not now understand the new intrigue for peace, 
and why the masters of Germany do not hesitate to use 

25 any agency that promises to effect their purpose, the de- 
ceit of nations? Their present particular aim is to deceive 
all those who, throughout the world, stand for the rights 
of peoples and the self-government of nations, for they see 
what immense strength the forces of justice and liberalism 

30 are gathering out of this war. They are employing Lib- 
erals in their enterprises. Let them once succeed, and 
these men, now their tools, will be ground to powder 
beneath the weight of the great military Empire; the 
Revolutionists of Russia will be cut off from all succour 



The German Plot 263 

and the cooperation of Western Europe, and a counter- 
revolution will be fostered and supported; Germany herself 
will lose her chance of freedom, and all Europe will arm 
for the next final struggle. 

The sinister intrigue is being no less actively conducted 5 
in this country than in Russia and in every country of 
Europe into which the agents and dupes of the Imperial 
German Government can get access. That Government 
has many spokesmen here, in places both high and low. 
They have learned discretion; they keep within the law. 10 
It is opinion they utter now, not sedition. They proclaim 
the liberal purposes of their masters, and they declare 
that this is a foreign war, which can touch America with 
no danger either to her lands or institutions. They set 
England at the center of the stage, and talk of her ambi- 15 
tion to assert her economic dominion throughout the 
world. They appeal to our ancient tradition of isolation, 
and seek to undermine the Government with false profes- 
sions of loyalty to its principles. 

But they will make no headway. Falsehood betrays 20 
them in every accent. These facts are patent to all the 
world, and nowhere more plainly than in the United 
States, where we are accustomed to deal with facts, not 
sophistries; and the great fact that stands out above all 
the rest is that this is a peoples' war for freedom, justice 25 
and self-government among all the nations of the world, a 
war to make the world safe for the peoples who live upon 
it, the German people included, and that with us rests 
the choice to break through all these hypocrisies, the 
patent cheats and masks of brute force, and help set the 30 
world free, or else stand aside and let it be dominated 
through sheer weight of arms and the arbitrary choices 
of the self-constituted masters by the nation which can 
maintain the biggest armies, the most irresistible arma- 



264 Wood row Wilson 

ments, a power to which the world has afforded no parallel, 
in the face of which political freedom must wither and 
perish. 

For us there was but one choice. We have made it, 

5 and woe be to that man, or that group of men, that seeks 
to stand in our way in this day of high resolution, when 
every principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated and 
made secure for the salvation of the nation. We are ready 
to plead at the bar of history, and our flag shall wear a 

10 new luster. Once more we shall make good with our lives 
and fortunes the great faith to which we are born, and a 
new glory shall shine in the face of our people. 



REPLY TO THE POPE 

[This important and eloquent document, though signed by the 
Secretary of State, was of course authorized by the President, and 
indeed bears internal marks of being his own composition. The Pope 
had made a plea for peace, which was by our government deemed 
premature.] 

August 27, 1917. 
To His Holiness Benedictus XV, Pope: 

In acknowledgment of the communication of Your 
Holiness to the belligerent peoples, dated August i, 19 17, 
the President of the United States requests me to transmit 5 
the following reply: 

Every heart that has not been bhnded and hardened 
by this terrible war must be touched by this moving appeal 
of His HoHness the Pope, must feel the dignity and force 
of the humane and generous motives which prompted it, 10 
and must fervently wish that we might take the path of 
peace he so persuasively points out. But it would be folly 
to take it if it does not in fact lead to the goal he proposes. 
Our response must be based upon the stern facts and upon 
nothing else. It is not a mere cessation of arms he desires; 15 
it is a stable and enduring peace. This agony must not 
be gone through with again, and it must be a matter of 
very sober judgment that will insure us against it. 

His Holiness in substance proposes that we return to 
the status quo ante bellum, and that then there be a 20 
general condonation, disarmament, and a concert of na- 
tions based upon an acceptance of the principle of arbi- 
tration; that by a similar concert freedom of the seas be 
estabHshed; and that the territorial claims of France and 
Italy, the perplexing problems of the Balkan States, and 25 

26s 



266 Woodrow Wilson 

the restitution of Poland be left to such conciliatory ad- 
justments as may be possible in the new temper of such a 
peace, due regard being paid to the aspirations of the 
peoples whose political fortunes and affiliations will be 

5 involved. 

It is manifest that no part of this program can be suc- 
cessfully carried out unless the restitution of the status 
quo ante furnishes a firm and satisfactory basis for it. 
The object of this war is to deliver the free peoples of the 

10 world from the menace and the actual power of a vast 
military estabHshment controlled by an irresponsible gov- 
ernment which, having secretly planned to dominate the 
world, proceeded to carry the plan out without regard 
either to the sacred obhgations of treaty or the long-estab- 

15 Hshed practices and long-cherished principles of interna- 
tional action and honor; which chose its own time for the 
war; delivered its blow fiercely and suddenly; stopped at 
no barrier either of law or of mercy; swept a whole con- 
tinent within the tide of blood — not the blood of soldiers 

20 only, but the blood of innocent women and children also 
and of the helpless poor; and now stands balked but not 
defeated, the enemy of four-fifths of the world. This 
power is not the German people. It is the ruthless master 
of the German people. It is no business of ours how that 

25 great people came under its control or submitted with 

temporary zest to the domination of its purpose; but it 

is our business to see to it that the history of the rest of 

the world is no longer left to its handling. 

To deal with such a power by way of peace upon the 

30 plan proposed by His Holiness the Pope would, so far as 
we can see, involve a recuperation of its strength and a 
renewal of its policy; would make it necessary to create a 
permanent hostile combination of nations against the 
German people who are its instruments; and would result 



Reply to the Pope 267 

in abandoning the newborn Russia to the intrigue, the 
manifold subtle interference, and the certain counter- 
revolution which would be attempted by all the malign 
influences to which the German Government has of late 
accustomed the world. Can peace be based upon a restitu- 5 
tion of its power or upon any word of honor it could pledge 
in a treaty of settlement and accommodation? 

Responsible statesmen must now everywhere see, if 
they never saw before, that no peace can rest securely 
upon political or economic restrictions meant to benefit 10 
some nations and cripple or embarrass others, upon vin- 
dictive action of any sort, or any kind of revenge or de- 
liberate injury. The American people have suffered in- 
tolerable wrongs at the hands of the Imperial German 
Government, but they desire no reprisal upon the German 15 
people who have themselves suffered all things in this 
war which they did not choose. They believe that peace 
should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of 
Governments — the rights of peoples great or small, weak 
or powerful — their equal right to freedom and security 20 
and self-government and to a participation upon fair 
terms in the economic opportunities of the world, the 
German people of course included if they will accept 
equality and not seek domination. 

The test, therefore, of every plan of peace is this: Is it 25 
based upon the faith of all the peoples involved or merely 
upon the word of an ambitious and intriguing government 
on the one hand and of a group of free peoples on the 
other? This is a test which goes to the root of the matter; 
and it is the test which must be applied. 3° 

The purposes of the United States in this war are known 
to the whole world, to every people to whom the truth 
has been permitted to come. They do not need to be 
stated again. We seek no material advantage of any 



268 - Woodrow Wilson 

kind. We believe that the intolerable wrongs done in this 
war by the furious and brutal power of the Imperial Ger- 
man Government ought to be repaired, but not at the 
expense of the sovereignty of any people — rather a vindica- 

5 tion of the sovereignty both of those that are weak and 
of those that are strong. Punitive damages, the dismem- 
berment of empires, the estabUshment of selfish and ex- 
clusive economic leagues, wt deem inexpedient and in 
the end worse than futile, no proper basis for a peace of 

TO any kind, least of all for an enduring peace. That must 
be based upon justice and fairness and the common rights 
of mankind. 

We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Ger- 
many as a guaranty of anything that is to endure, unless 

15 explicitly supported by such conclusive evidence of the 
will and purpose of the German people themselves as the 
other peoples of the world would be justified in accepting. 
Without such guaranties treaties of settlement, agreements 
for disarmament, covenants to set up arbitration in the 

20 place of force, territorial adjustments, reconstitutions of 
small nations, if made with the German Government, no 
man, no nation could now depend on. We must await 
some new evidence of the purposes of the great peoples 
of the central powers. God grant it may be given soon 

25 and in a way to restore the confidence of all peoples every- 
where in the faith of nations and the possibility of a cove- 
nanted peace. 

Robert Lansing, 
Secretary of State of the United States of America. 



LABOR MUST BE FREE 

[Address to the American Federation of Labor Convention, Buffalo, 
New York, November 12, 1917.] 

Mr. President, Delegates of the American Federa- 
tion or Labor, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
I esteem it a great privilege and a real honor to be thus 
admitted to your public counsels. When your executive 
committee paid me the compliment of inviting me here I 5 
gladly accepted the invitation because it seems to me 
that this, above all other times in our history, is the time 
for common counsel, for the drawing together not only of 
the energies but of the minds of the Nation. I thought 
that it was a welcome opportunity for disclosing to you 10 
some of the thoughts that have been gathering in my mind 
during these last momentous months. 

critical time in history 

I am introduced to you as the President of the United 
States, and yet I would be pleased if you would put the 
thought of the office into the background and regard me 15 
as one of your fellow-citizens who has come here to speak, 
not the words of authority, but the words of counsel; the 
words which men should speak to one another who wish 
to be frank in a moment more critical perhaps than the 
history of the world has ever yet known; a moment when 20 
it is every man's duty to forget himself, to forget his own 
interests, to fill himself with the nobiUty of a great na- 
tional and world conception, and act upon a new platform 

269 
I 



270 Woodrow Wilson 

elevated above the ordinary affairs of life and lifted to 
where men have views of the long destiny of man- 
kind. 

I think that in order to realize just what this moment of 

S counsel is it is very desirable that we should remind our- 
selves just how this war came about and just what it is for. 
You can explain most wars very simply, but the explana- 
tion of this is not so simple. Its roots run deep into all the 
obscure soils of history, and in my view this is the last 

10 decisive issue between the old principle of power and the 
new principle of freedom. 

WAR STARTED BY GERMANY 

The war was started by Germany. Her authorities 
deny that they started it, but I am willing to let the state- 
ment I have just made await the verdict of history. And 

15 the thing that needs to be explained is why Germany 
started the war. Remember v/hat the position of Germany 
in the world was — as enviable a position as any nation 
has ever occupied. The whole world stood at admiration 
of her wonderful intellectual and material achievements. 

20 All the intellectual men of the world went to school to 
her. As a university man I have been surrounded by 
men trained in Germany, men who had resorted to Ger- 
many because nowhere else could they get such thorough 
and searching training, particularly in the principles of 

25 science and the principles that underlie modern material 
achievement. Her men of science had made her indus- 
tries perhaps the most competent industries of the world, 
and the label ''Made in Germany" was a guarantee of 
good workmanship and of sound material. She had 

30 access to all the markets of the world, and every other 
nation who traded in those markets feared Germany be- 



Labor Must be Free 271 

cause of her effective and almost irresistible competition. 
She had a ''place in the sun." 

Germany's industrial growth 

Why was she not satisfied? What more did she want? 
There was nothing in the world of peace that she did not 
already have and have in abundance. We boast of the 5 
extraordinary pace of American advancement. We show 
with pride the statistics of the increase of our industries 
and of the population of our cities. Well, those statistics 
did not match the recent statistics of Germany. Her old 
cities took on youth and grew faster than any American 10 
cities ever grew. Her old industries opened their eyes and 
saw a new world and went out for its conquest. And yet 
the authorities of Germany were not satisfied. 

You have one part of the answer to the question why she 
was not satisfied in her methods of competition. There is 15 
no important industry in Germany upon which the Govern- 
ment has not laid its hands, to direct it and, when necessity 
arose, control it; and you have only to ask any man whom 
you meet who is familiar with the conditions that prevailed 
before the war in the matter of national competition to 20 
find out the methods of competition which the German 
manufacturers and exporters used under the patronage 
and support of the Government of Germany. You will 
find that they were the same sorts of competition that we 
have tried to prevent by law within our own borders. If 25 
they could not sell their goods cheaper than we could sell 
ours at a profit to themselves they could get a subsidy 
from the Government which made it possible to sell them 
cheaper anyhow, and the conditions of competition were 
thus controlled in large measure by the German Govern- 30 
ment itself. 



272 Woodrow Wilson 

BERLIN-BAGDAD RAILWAY 

But that did not satisfy the German Government. All 
the while there was lying behind its thought and in its 
dreams of the future a political control which would 
enable it in the long run to dominate the labor and the 

5 industry of the world. They were not content with success 
by superior achievement; they wanted success by author- 
ity. I suppose very few of you have thought much about 
the BerHn-to-Bagdad Railway. The Berlin-Bagdad Rail- 
way was constructed in order to run the threat of force 

10 down the flank of the industrial undertakings of half a 
dozen other countries; so that when German competition 
came in it would not be resisted too far, because there was 
always the possibiHty of getting German armies into the 
heart of that country quicker than any other armies could 

15 be got there. 

Look at the map of Europe now! Germany is thrusting 
upon us again and again the discussion of peace talks, — 
about what? Talks about Belgium; talks about northern 
France; talks about Alsace-Lorraine. Well, those are 

20 deeply interesting subjects to us and to them, but they are 
not the heart of the matter. Take the map and look at it. 
Germany has absolute control of Austria-Hungary, prac- 
tical control of the Balkan States, control of Turkey, con- 
trol of Asia Minor. I saw a map in which the whole 

25 thing was printed in appropriate black the other day, and 
the black stretched all the way from Hamburg to Bagdad — 
the bulk of German power inserted into the heart of the 
world. If she can keep that, she has kept all that her 
dreams contemplated when the war began. If she can 

30 keep that, her power can disturb the world as long as she 
keeps it, always provided, for I feel bound to put this 
proviso in — always provided the present influences that 



Labor Must be Free 273 

control the German Government continue to control it. 
I believe that the spirit of freedom can get into the hearts 
of Germans and find as fine a welcome there as it can find 
in any other hearts, but the spirit of freedom does not 
suit the plans of the Pan-Germans. Power cannot be used 5 
with concentrated force against free peoples if it is used 
by free people. 

PEACE RUMORS 

You know how many intimations come to us from one of 
the central powers that it is more anxious for peace than 
the chief central power, and you know that it means that 10 
the people in that central power know that if the war ends 
as it stands they will in effect themselves be vassals of 
Germany, notwithstanding that their populations are 
compounded of all the peoples of that part of the world, 
and notwithstanding the fact that they do not wish in their 15 
pride and proper spirit of nationality to be so absorbed and 
dominated. Germany is determined that the political 
power of the world shall belong to her. There have been 
such ambitions before. They have been in part realized, 
but never before have those ambitions been based upon so 20 
exact and precise and scientific a plan of domination. 

May I not say that it is amazing to me that any group 
of persons should be so ill-informed as to suppose, as some 
groups in Russia apparently suppose, that any reforms 
planned in the interest of the people can live in the presence 25 
of a Germany powerful enough to undermine or overthrow 
them by intrigue or force? Any body of free men that 
compounds with the present German Government is 
compounding for its own destruction. But that is not the 
whole of the story. Any man in America or anywhere else 30 
that supposes that the free industry and enterprise of the 
world can continue if the Pan-German plan is achieved and 



lO 



274 Woodrow Wilson 

German power fastened upon the world is as fatuous as the 
dreamers in Russia. W^at I am opposed to is not the 
feeUng of the pacifists, but their stupidity. My heart is 
with them, but my mind has a contempt for them. I want 
5 peace, but I know how to get it, and they do not. 

COLONEL house's MISSION 

You will notice that I sent a friend of mine, Colonel 
House, to Europe, who is as great a lover of peace as any 
man in the world; but I didn't send him on a peace mission 
yet. I sent him to take part in a conference as to how the 
war was to be won, and he knows, as I know, that that is the 
way to get peace, if you want it for more than a few minutes. 
AH of this is a preface to the conference that I have 
referred to with regard to what we are going to do. If we 
are true friends of freedom, our own or anybody else's, we 

15 will see that the power of this country and the productivity 
of this country is raised to its absolute maximum, and that 
absolutely nobody is allowed to stand in the way of it. 
When I say that nobody is allowed to stand in the way I 
do not mean that they shall be prevented by the power of 

20 the Government but by the power of the American spirit. 
Our duty, if we are to do this great thing and show America 
to be what we believe her to be — the greatest hope and 
energy of the world — is to stand together night and day 
until the job is finished. 

LABOR MUST BE FREE 

25 While we are fighting for freedom we must see, among 
other things, that labor is free; and that means a number 
of interesting things. It means not only that we must do 
what we have declared our purpose to do, see that the 
conditions of labor are not rendered more onerous by the 



Labor Must be Free 275 

war, but also that we shall see to it that the instrumental- 
ities by which the conditions of labor are improved are not 
blocked or checked. That we must do. That has been 
the matter about which I have taken pleasure in conferring 
from time to time with your president, Mr. Gompers; and 5 
if I may be permitted to do so, I want to express my 
admiration of his patriotic courage, his large vision, and 
his statesmanlike sense of what has to be done. I like to 
lay my mind alongside of a mind that knows how to pull in 
harness. The horses that kick over the traces will have 10 
to be put in corral. 

Now, to stand together means that nobody must inter- 
rupt the processes of our energy if the interruption can 
possibly be avoided without the absolute invasion of 
freedom. To put it concretely, that means this: Nobody 15 
has a right to stop the processes of labor until all the 
methods of conciliation and settlement have been ex- 
hausted. And I might as well say right here that I am not 
talking to you alone. You sometimes stop the courses of 
labor, but there are others who do the same, and I believe 20 
I am speaking from my own experience not only, but from 
the experience of others when I say that you are reasonable 
in a larger number of cases than the capitalists. I am not 
saying these things to them personally yet, because I have 
not had a chance, but they have to be said, not in any spirit 25 
of criticism, but in order to clear the atmosphere and come 
down to business. Everybody on both sides has now got to 
transact business, and a settlement is never impossible 
when both sides want to do the square and right thmg. 

SETTLEMENT HARD TO AVOID 

Moreover, a settlement is always hard to avoid when 30 
the parties can be brought face to face. I can differ from 



276 Wood row Wilson 

a man much more radically when he is not in the room 
than I can when he is in the room, because then the awk- 
ward thing is he can come back at me and answer what I 
say. It is always dangerous for a man to have the floor en- 

5 tirely to himself. Therefore, we must insist in every in- 
stance that the parties come into each other's presence and 
there discuss the issues between them, and not separately 
in places which have no communication with each other. 
I always Hke to remind myself of a delightful saying of an 

10 Englishman of the past generation, Charles Lamb. He 
stuttered a little bit, and once when he was with a group 
of friends he spoke very harshly of some man who was 
not present. One of his friends said: "Why, Charles, I 
didn't know that you knew so and so." "0-o-oh," he 

15 said, "I-I d-d-don't; I-I can't h-h h hate a m-m-man I-I 
know." There is a great deal of human nature, of very 
pleasant human nature, in the saying. It is hard to hate 
a man you know. I may admit, parenthetically, that 
there are some politicians whose methods I do not at all 

20 believe in, but they are jolly good fellows, and if they only 
would not talk the wrong kind of politics to me, I would 
love to be with them. 

NO SYMPATHY WITH MOB SPIRIT 

So it is all along the line, in serious matters and things 
less serious. We are all of the same clay and spirit, and 

25 we can get together if we desire to get together. There- 
fore, my counsel to you is this: Let us show ourselves 
Americans by showing that we do not want to go off in 
separate camps or groups by ourselves, but that we want 
to cooperate with all other classes and all other groups in 

30 the common enterprise which is to release the spirits of the 
world from bondage. I would be willing to set that up as 



Labor Must be Free 277. 

the final test of an American. That is the meaning of 
democracy. I have been very much distressed, my fellow- 
citizens, by some of the things that have happened re- 
cently The mob spirit is displaying itself here and there 
in this country. I have no sympathy with what some men 5 
are saying, but I have no sympathy with the men who 
take their punishment into their own hands; and I want 
to say to every man who does join such a mob that I do 
not recognize him as worthy of the free institutions of the 
United States. There are some organizations in this 10 
country whose object is anarchy and the destruction of 
law, but I would not meet their efforts by making myself 
partner in destroying the law. I despise and hate their 
purposes as much as any man, but I respect the ancient 
processes of justice; and I would be too proud not to see 15 
them done justice, however wTong they are. 

MUST OBEY COMMON COUNSEL 

So I want to utter my earnest protest against any mani- 
festation of the spirit of lawlessness anywhere or in any 
cause. Why, gentlemen, look what it means. We claim 
to be the greatest democratic people in the world, and 20 
democracy means first of all that we can govern ourselves. 
If our men have not self-control, then they are not capable 
of that great thing which we call democratic government. 
\ man who takes the law into his own hands is not the 
right man to cooperate in any formation or development 25 
of law and institutions, and some of the processes by which 
the struggle between capital and labor is carried on are 
processes that come very near to taking the law into your 
own hands. I do not mean for a moment to compare 
them with what I have just been speaking of, but I want 30 
you to see that they are mere gradations m this manifesta- 



278 Woodrow Wilson 

tion of the unwillingness to cooperate, and that the funda- 
mental lesson of the whole situation is that we must not 
only take common counsel, but that we must yield to and 
obey common counsel. Not all of the instrumentalities 

5 for this are at hand. I am hopeful that in the very near 
future new instrumentalities may be organized by which 
we can see to it that various things that are now going on 
ought not to go on. There are various processes of the 
dilution of labor and the unnecessary substitution of labor 

10 and the bidding in distant markets and unfairly upsetting 
the whole competition of labor which ought not to go on. 
I mean now on the part of employers, and wx must in- 
terject some instrumentality of cooperation by which the 
fair thing will be done all around. I am hopeful that some 

15 such instrumentalities may be devised, but whether they 
are or not, we must use those that we have and upon every 
occasion where it is necessary have such an instrumen- 
tality originated upon that occasion. 

So, my fellow-citizens, the reason I came away from 

20 Washington is that I sometimes get lonely down there. 
So many people come to Washington who know things 
that are not so, and so few people who know anything 
about what the people of the United States are thinking 
about. I have to come away and get reminded of the rest 

25 of the country. I have to come away and talk to men 
who are up against the real thing, and say to them, ''I 
am with you if you are with me." And the only test of 
being with me is not to think about me personally at all, 
but merely to think of me as the expression for the time 

30 being of the power and dignity and hope of the United 
States. 



THE CALL FOR WAR WITH AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, 
December 4, igi 7.] 

Gentlemen of the Congress: 

Eight months have elapsed since I last had the honor 
of addressing you. They have been months crowded with 
events of immense and grave significance for us. I shall 
not undertake to retail or even to summarize those events. 5 
The practical particulars of the part we have played in 
them will be laid before you in the reports of the Executive 
Departments. I shall discuss only our present outlook 
upon these vast affairs, our present duties, and the im- 
mediate means of accomplishing the objects we shall hold 10 
always in view. 

I shall not go back to debate the causes of the war. 
The intolerable wrongs done and planned against us by 
the sinister masters of Germany have long since become 
too grossly obvious and odious to every true American 15 
to need to be rehearsed. But I shall ask you to consider 
again and with a very grave scrutiny our objectives and 
the measures by which we mean to attain them; for the 
purpose of discussion here in this place is action, and our 
action must move straight towards definite ends. Our 20 
object is, of course-, to win the war; and we shall not 
slacken or suffer ourselves to be diverted until it is won. 
But it is worth while asking and answering the question, 
When shall we consider the war won? 

From one point of view it is not necessary to broach 25 
this fundamental matter. I do not doubt that the Amer- 
ican people know what the war is about and what sort of 

279 



28o Wood row Wilson 

an outcome they will regard as a realization of their pur- 
pose in it. As a nation we are united in spirit and inten- 
tion. I pa}^ little heed to those who tell me otherwise. 
I hear the voices of dissent, — who does not? I hear the 
5 criticism and the clamor of the noisily thoughtless and 
troublesome. I also see men here and there fling them- 
selves in impotent disloyalty against the calm, indomitable 
power of the nation. I hear men debate peace who under- 
stand neither its nature not the way in which we may 

lo attain it with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirits. But I 

know that none of these speaks for the nation. They do 

not touch the heart of anything. They may safely be 

left to strut their uneasy hour and be forgotten. 

But from another point of view I believe that it is neces- 

15 sary to say plainly what we here at the seat of action con- 
sider the war to be for and what part we mean to play in 
the settlement of its searching issues. We are the spokes- 
men of the American people and they have a right to know 
whether their purpose is ours. They desire peace by the 

20 overcoming of evil, by the defeat once for all of the sinister 
forces that interrupt peace and render it impossible, and 
they wish to know how closely our thought runs with 
theirs and what action we propose. They are impatient 
with those who desire peace by any sort of compromise, — 

25 deeply and indignantly impatient, — but they will be 
equally impatient with us if we do not make it plain to 
them what our objectives are and what we are planning 
for in seeking to make conquest of peace by arms. 

I beheve that I speak for them when I say two things: 

30 First, that this intolerable Thing of which the masters of 
Germany have shown us the ugly face, this menace of 
combined intrigue and force which we now see so clearly 
as the German power, a Thing without conscience or honor 
or capacity for covenanted peace, must be crushed and, 



The Call for War with Austria-Hungary 281 

if it be not utterly brought to an end, at least shut out 
from the friendly intercourse of the nations; and, second, 
that when this Thing and its power are indeed defeated 
and the time comes that we can discuss peace, — when the 
German people have spokesmen whose word we can be- 5 
lieve and when those spokesmen are ready in the name of 
their people to accept the common judgment of the na- 
tions as to what shall henceforth be the bases of law and 
of covenant for the life of the w^orld, — we shall be willing 
and glad to pay the full price for peace, and pay it un- 10 
grudgingly. We know what that price will be. It will 
be full, impartial justice, — justice done at every point 
and to every nation that the firftil settlement must affect, 
our enemies as well as our friends. 

You catch, with me, the voices of humanity that are 15 
in the air. They grow daily more audible, more articulate, 
more persuasive, and they come from the hearts of men 
everywhere. They insist that the war shall not end in 
vindictive action of any kind; that no nation or people 
shall be robbed or punished because the irresponsible rulers 20 
of a single country have themselves done deep and abomin- 
able wrong. It is this thought that has been expressed in 
the formula "No annexations, no contributions, no puni- 
tive indemnities." Just because this crude formula ex- 
presses the instinctive judgment as to right of plain men 25 
everywhere it has been made diligent use of by the mas- 
ters of German intrigue to lead the people of Russia 
astray — and the people of every other country their 
agents could reach, in order that a premature peace might 
be brought about before autocracy has been taught its 30 
final and convincing lesson, and the people of the world 
put in control of their ow^n destinies. 

But the fact that a wrong use has been made of a just 
idea is no reason why a right use should not be made of it. 



282 Woodrow Wilson 

It ought to be brought under the patronage of its real 
friends. Let it be said again that autocracy must first be 
shown the utter futihty of its claims to power or leadership 
in the modern world. It is impossible to apply any stand- 
5 ard of justice so long as such forces are unchecked and 
undefeated as the present masters of Germany command. 
Not until that has been done can Right be set up as arbiter 
and peace-maker among the nations. But when that has 
been done, — as, God willing, it assuredly will be, — we shall 

10 at last be free to do an unprecedented thing, and this is the 
time to avow our purpose to do it. We shall be free to 
base peace on generosity and justice, to the exclusion of 
all selfish claims to advantage even on the part of the 
victors. 

15 Let there be no misunderstanding. Our present and 
immediate task is to win the war, and nothing shall turn 
us aside from it until it is accompHshed. Every power and 
resource we possess, v/hether of men, of money, or of 
materials, is being devoted and will continue to be de- 

20 voted to that purpose until it is achieved. Those who 
desire to bring peace about before that purpose is achieved 
I counsel to carry their advice elsewhere. We will not 
entertain it. We shall regard the war as won only when 
the German people say to us, through properly accredited 

25 representatives, that they are ready to agree to a settle- 
ment based upon justice and the reparation of the wrongs 
their rulers have done. They have done a wrong to Bel- 
gium which must be repaired. They have established a 
power over other lands and peoples than their own, — over 

30 the great Empire of Austria-Hungary, over hitherto free 
Balkan states, over Turkey, and within Asia, — which 
must be relinquished. 

Germany's success by skill, by industry, by knowledge, 
by enterprise we did not grudge or oppose, but admired, 



The Call for War with Austria-Hungary 283 

rather. She had built up for herself a real empire of trade 
and influence, secured by the peace of the world. We were 
content to abide the rivalries of manufacture, science, and 
commerce that were involved for us in her success and 
stand or fall as we had or did not have the brains and the 5 
initiative to surpass her. But at the moment when she 
had conspicuously won her triumphs of peace she threw 
them away, to establish in their stead what the world will 
no longer permit to be established, mihtary and political 
domination by arms, by which to oust where she could not 10 
excel the rivals she most feared and hated. The peace we 
make must remedy that wrong. It must deliver the once 
fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and northern 
France from the Prussian conquest and the Prussian 
menace, but it must also deliver the peoples of Austria- 15 
Plungary, the peoples of the Balkans, and the peoples of 
Turkey, alike in Europe and in Asia, from the impudent 
and alien dominion of the Prussian military and commer- 
cial autocracy. 

We owe it, however, to ourselves to say that we do not 20 
wish in any way to impair or to rearrange the Austro- 
Hungarian Empire. It is no affair of ours what they do 
with their own life, either industrially or politically. We 
do not purpose or desire to dictate to them in any way. 
We only desire to see that their affairs are left in their 25 
own hands, in all matters, great or small. We shall hope 
to secure for the peoples of the Balkan peninsula and for 
the people of the Turkish Empire the right and opportunity 
to make their own lives safe, their own fortunes secure 
against oppression or injustice and from the dictation of 30 
foreign courts or parties. 

And our attitude and purpose with regard to Germany 
herself are of a like kind. We intend no wrong against the 
German Empire, no interference with her internal affairs. 



284 Woodrow Wilson 

We should deem either the one or the other absolutely 
unjustifiable, absolutely contrary to the principles we have 
professed to live by and to hold most sacred throughout 
our life as a nation. 

5 The people of Germany are being told by the men whom 
they now permit to deceive them and to act as their mas- 
ters that they are fighting for the very life and existence 
of their Empire, a war of desperate self-defense against 
deliberate aggression. Nothing could be more grossly or 

10 wantonly false, and we must seek by the utmost openness 
and candor as to our real aims to convince them of its 
falseness. We are in fact fighting for their emancipation 
from fear, along with our own, — from the fear as well as 
from the fact of unjust attack by neighbors or rivals or 

15 schemers after world empire. No one is threatening the 
existence or the independence or the peaceful enterprise of 
the German Empire. 

The worst that can happen to the detriment of the 
German people is this, that if they should still, after the 

20 war is over, continue to be obliged to live under ambitious 
and intriguing masters interested to disturb the peace of 
the world, men or classes of men whom the other peoples of 
the world could not trust, it might be impossible to admit 
them to the partnership of nations which must henceforth 

25 guarantee the world's peace. That partnership must be a 
partnership of peoples, not a mere partnership of govern- 
ments. It might be impossible, also, in such untoward cir- 
cumstances, to admit Germany to the free economic 
intercourse which must inevitably spring out of the other 

30 partnerships of a real peace. But there would be no 
aggression in that; and such a situation, inevitable be- 
cause of distrust, would in the very nature of things 
sooner or later cure itself, by processes which would 
assuredly set in. 



The Call for War with Austria-Hungary 285 

The wrongs, the very deep wrongs, committed in this 
war will have to be righted. That of course. But they 
cannot and must not be righted by the commission of 
similar wrongs against Germany and her allies. The 
world will not permit the commission of similar wrongs as a 5 
means of reparation and settlement. Statesmen must by 
this time have learned that the opinion of the world is 
everywhere wide awake and fully comprehends the issues 
involved. No representative of any self-governed nation 
will dare disregard it by attempting any such covenants of 10 
selfishness and compromise as were entered into at the 
Congress of Vienna. The thought of the plain people here 
and everywhere throughout the world, the people who 
enjoy no privilege and have very simple and unsophis- 
ticated standards of right and wrong, is the air all govern- 15 
ments must henceforth breathe if they would live. It is in 
the full disclosing light of that thought that all policies 
must be conceived and executed in this midday hour of the 
world's life. German rulers have been able to upset the 
peace of the world only because the German people were 20 
not suffered under their tutelage to share the comradeship 
of the other peoples of the world either in thought or in 
purpose. They were allowed to have no opinion of their 
own which might be set up as a rule of conduct for those 
who exercised authority over them. But the congress 25 
that concludes this war will feel the full strength of the 
tides that run now in the hearts and consciences of free 
men everywhere. Its conclusions will run with those 
tides. 

All these things have been true from the very beginning 30 
of this stupendous war; and I cannot help thinking that if 
they had been made plain at the very outset the sympathy 
and enthusiasm of the Russian people might have been 
once for all enlisted on the side of the Allies, suspicion and 



286 Woodrow Wilson 

distrust swept away, and a real and lasting union of pur- 
pose effected. Had they believed these things at the very 
moment of their revolution and had they been confirmed 
in that behef since, the sad reverses which have recently 

5 marked the progress of their affairs towards an ordered and 
stable government of free men might have been avoided. 
The Russian people have been poisoned by the very same 
falsehoods that have kept the German people in the dark, 
and the poison has been administered by the very same 

lo hands. The only possible antidote is the truth. It cannot 
be uttered too plainly or too often. 

From every point of view, therefore, it has seemed to be 
my duty to speak these declarations of purpose, to add 
these specific interpretations to what I took the liberty of 

15 saying to the Senate in January. Our entrance into the 
war has not altered our attitude towards the settlement 
that must come when it is over. When I said in January 
that the nations of the world were entitled not only to free 
pathways upon the sea but also to assured and unmolested 

20 access to those pathwjlys I was thinking, and I am thinking 
now, not of the smaller and weaker nations alone, which 
need our countenance and support, but also of the great 
and powerful nations, and of our present enemies as well 
as our present associates in the war. I was thinking, and 

25 am thinking now, of Austria herself, among the rest, as 
well as of Serbia and of Poland. Justice and equahty of 
rights can be had only at a great price. We are seeking 
permanent, not temporary, foundations for the peace of 
the world and must seek them candidly and fearlessly. As 

30 always, the right will prove to be the expedient. 

What shall we do, then, to push this great war of free- 
dom and justice to its righteous conclusion? We must 
clear away with a thorough hand all impediments to suc- 
cess and \\c must make every adjustment of law that will 



The Call for War with Austria-Hungary 287 

facilitate the full and free use of our whole capacity and 
force as a fighting unit. 

One very embarrassing obstacle that stands in our way 
is that w^e are at war with Germany but not with her 
allies. I therefore very earnestly recommend that the 5 
Congress immediately declare the United States in a 
state of war with Austria-Hungary. Does it seem strange 
to you that this should be the conclusion of the argument 
I have just addressed to you? It is not. It is in fact the 
inevitable logic of what I have said. Austria-Hungary is 10 
for the time being not her own mistress but simply the 
vassal of the German Government. We must face the 
facts as they are and act upon them without sentiment 
in this stern business. The government of Austria- 
Hungary is not acting upon its own initiative or in re- 15 
sponse to the wishes and feelings of its own peoples but 
as the instrument of another nation. We must meet its 
force with our own and regard the Central Powers as but 
one. The war can be successfully conducted in no other 
way. The same logic would lead also to a declaration of 20 
war against Turkey and Bulgaria. They also are the 
tools of Germany. But they are mere tools and do not 
yet stand in the direct path of our necessary action. We 
shall go wherever the necessities of this war carry us, but 
it seems to me that we should go only where immediate 25 
and practical considerations lead us and not heed any 
others. 

The financial and military measures which must be 
adopted will suggest themselves as the war and its under- 
takings develop, but I will take the liberty of proposing 30 
to you certain other acts of legislation which seem to me 
to be needed for the support of the war and for the release 
of our whole force and energy. 

It will be necessary to extend in certain particulars the 



288 Woodrow Wilson 

legislation of the last session with regard to alien enemies; 
and also necessary, I beheve, to create a very definite 
and particular control over the entrance and departure 
of all persons into and from the United States. 

5 Legislation should be enacted defining as a criminal 
offense every wilful violation of the presidential proclama- 
tions relating to alien enemies promulgated under sec- 
tion 4067 of the Revised Statutes and providing appro- 
priate punishments; and women as well as men should be 

10 included under the terms of the acts placing restraints 
upon alien enemies. It is likely that as time goes on 
many alien enemies will be willing to be fed and housed 
at the expense of the Government in the detention camps 
and it would be the purpose of the legislation I have sug- 

15 gested to confine offenders among them in penitentiaries 
and other similar institutions where they could be made 
to work as other criminals do. 

Recent experience has convinced me that the Congress 
must go further in authorizing the Government to set 

20 limits to prices. The law of supply and demand, I am 
sorry to say, has been replaced by the law of unrestrained 
selfishness. While wt have eliminated profiteering in 
several branches of industry it still runs impudently 
rampant in others. The farmers, for example, complain 

25 with a great deal of justice that, while the regulation of 
food prices restricts their incomes, no restraints are placed 
upon the prices of most of the things they must themselves 
purchase; and similar inequities obtain on all sides. 

It is imperatively necessary that the consideration of 

30 the full use of the water power of the country and also 
the consideration of the systematic and yet economical 
development of such of the natural resources of the coun- 
try as are still under the control of the federal government 
should be immediately resumed and affirmatively and 



The Call for War with Austria-Hungary 289 

constructively dealt with at the earliest possible moment. 
The pressing need of such legislation is daily becoming 
more obvious. 

The legislation proposed at the last session with regard 
to regulated combinations among our exporters, in order 5 
to provide for our foreign trade a more effective organiza- 
tion and method of cooperation, ought by all means to 
be completed at this session. 

And I beg that the members of the House of Represen- 
tatives will permit me to express the opinion that it will 10 
be impossible to deal in any but a very wasteful and ex- 
travagant fashion with the enormous appropriations of 
the public moneys which must continue to be made, if 
the war is to be properly sustained, unless the House will 
consent to return to its former practice of initiating and 15 
preparing all appropriation bills through a single com- 
mittee, in order that responsibility may be centered, ex- 
penditures standardized and made uniform, and waste 
and duplication as much as possible avoided. 

Additional legislation may also become necessary before co 
the present Congress again adjourns in order to effect 
the most efficient coordination and operation of the rail- 
way and other transportation systems of the country; 
but to that I shall, if circumstances should demand, call 
the attention of the Congress upon another occasion. 25 

If I have overlooked anything that ought to be done 
for the more effective conduct of the war, your own coun- 
sels will supply the omission. What I am perfectly clear 
about is that in the present session of the Congress our 
whole attention and energy should be concentrated on the 30 
vigorous, rapid, and successful prosecution of the great 
task of w^inning the war. 

We can do this with all the greater zeal and enthusiasm 
because we know that for us this is a war of high principle, 



290 Woodrow Wilson 

debased by no selfish ambition of conquest or spoliation; 
because we know, and all the world knows, that we have 
been forced into it to save the very institutions we live 
under from corruption and destruction. The purposes 

5 of the Central Powers strike straight at the very heart of 
everything we believe in; their methods of warfare outrage 
every principle of humanity and of knightly honor; their 
intrigue has corrupted the very thought and spirit of many 
of our people; their sinister and secret diplomacy has 

10 sought to take our very territory away from us and dis- 
rupt the Union of the States. Our safety Avould be at an 
end, our honor forever sullied and brought into contempt 
were w^e to permit their triumph. They are striking at 
the very existence of democracy and liberty. 

15 It is because it is for us a war of high, disinterested pur- 
pose, in which all the free peoples of the world are banded 
together for the vindication of right, a war for the pres- 
ervation of our nation and of all that it has held dear of 
principle and of purpose, that we feel ourselves doubly 

20 constrained to propose for its outcome only that which 
is righteous and of irreproachable intention, for our foes 
as well as for our friends. The cause being just and holy, 
the settlement must be of like motive and quality. -For 
this we can fight, but for nothing less noble or less worthy 

25 of our traditions. For this cause we entered the war and 
for this cause will we battle until the last gun is fired. 

I hp^ve spoken plainly because this seems to me the time 
when it is most necessary to speak plainly, in order that 
all the world may know that even in the heat and ardor 

30 of the struggle and when our whole thought is of carry- 
ing the war through to its end we have not forgotten any 
ideal or principle for which the name of America has been 
held in honor among the nations and for which it has been 
our glory to contend in the great generations that went 



The Call for War with Austria-Hungary 291 

before us. A supreme moment of history has come. The 
eyes of the people have been opened and they see. The 
hand of God is laid upon the nations. He will show them 
favor, I devoutly believe, only if they rise to the clear 
heights of His own justice and mercy. 5 



GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATION OF 
RAILWAYS 

[Address deliv^ered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, 
January 4, 19 18.] 

Gentlemen of the Congress: 

I have asked the privilege of addressing you in order to 
report to you that on the twenty-eighth of December last, 
during the recess of the Congress, acting through the 

5 Secretary of War and under the authority conferred upon 
me by the Act of Congress approved August 29, 1916, I 
took possession and assumed control of the railway lines 
of the country and the systems of water transportation 
under their control. This step seemed to be imperatively 

ID necessary in the interest of the public welfare, in the 
presence of the great tasks of war with which we are now 
dealing. As our own experience develops difficulties and 
makes it clear what they are, I have deemed it my duty to 
remove those difficulties wherever I have the legal power 

15 to do so. To assume control of the vast railway systems 
of the country is, I realize, a very great responsibility, 
but to fail to do so in the existing circumstances would 
have been a much greater. I assumed the less responsi- 
bility rather than the weightier. 

20 I am sure that I am speaking the mind of all thoughtful 
Americans when I say that it is our duty as the represen- 
tatives of the nation to do everything that it is necessary 
to do to secure the complete mobilization of the whole re- 
sources of America by as rapid and effective means as can 

25 be found. Transportation supplies all the arteries of 
mobilization. Unless it be under a single and unified 

292 



Government Administration of Railways 293 

direction, the whole process of the nation's action is em- 
barrassed. 

It was in the true spirit of America, and it was right, that 
we should first try to effect the necessary unification under 
the voluntary action of those who were in charge of the 5 
great railway properties; and we did try it. The directors 
of the railways responded to the need promptly and 
generously. The group of railway executives who were 
charged with the task of actual coordination and general 
direction performed their difficult duties with patriotic 10 
zeal and marked ability, as was to have been expected, and 
did, I believe, everything that it was possible for them to 
do in the circumstances. If I have taken the task out of 
their hands, it has not been because of any derehction or 
failure on their part but only because there were some 15 
things which the Government can do and private manage- 
ment cannot. We shall continue to value most highly the 
advice and assistance of these gentlemen and I am sure we 
shall not find them withholding it. 

It had become unmistakably plain that only under 20 
government administration can the entire equipment of 
the several systems of transportation be fully and un- 
reservedly thrown into a common service without in- 
jurious discrimination against particular properties. 
Only under government administration can an absolutely 25 
unrestricted and unembarrassed common use be made of 
all tracks, terminals, terminal facilities and equipment of 
every kind. Only under that authority can new terminals 
be constructed and developed without regard to the re- 
quirements or limitations of particular roads. But under 30 
government administration all these things will be possi- 
ble, — not instantly, but as fast as practical difl&culties, 
which cannot be merely conjured away, give way before 
the new management. 



294 Woodrow Wilson 

The common administration will be carried out with as 
little disturbance of the present operating organizations 
and personnel of the railways as possible. Nothing will be 
altered or disturbed which it is not necessary to disturb. 
5 We are serving the public interest and safeguarding the 
public safety, but we are also regardful of the interest of 
those by whom these great properties are owned and glad 
to avail ourselves of the experience and trained ability of 
those who have been managing them. It is necessary that 

lo the transportation of troops and of war materials, of food 
and of fuel, and of everything that is necessary for the full 
mobilization of the energies and resources of the country, 
should be first considered, but it is clearly in the public 
interest also that the ordinary activities and the normal 

15 industrial and commercial life of the country should be 
interfered with and dislocated as little as possible, and the 
public may rest assured that the interest and convenience 
of the private shipper will be as carefully served and safe- 
guarded as it is possible to serve and safeguard it in the 

20 present extraordinary circumstances. 

While the present authority of the Executive suffices for 
all purposes of administration, and while of course all 
private interests must for the present give way to the 
public necessity, it is, I am sure you will agree with me, 

25 right and necessary that the owners and creditors of the 
railways, the holders of their stocks and bonds, should 
receive from the Government an unqualified guarantee 
that their properties will be maintained throughout the 
period of federal control in as good repair and as complete 

30 equipment as at present, and that the several roads will 
receive under federal management such compensation as is 
equitable and just alike to their owners and to the general 
public. I would suggest the average net railway operating 
income of the three years ending June 30, 19 17. I earnestly 



Government Administration of Railways 295 

recommend that these guarantees be given by appropriate 
legislation, and given as promptly as circumstances permit. 

I need not point out the essential justice of such guar- 
antees and their great influence and significance as ele- 
ments in the present financial and industrial situation of 5 
the country. Indeed, one of the strong arguments for 
assuming control of the railroads at this time is the finan- 
cial argument. It is necessary that the values of railway 
securities should be justly and fairly protected and that 
the large financial operations every year necessary in con- 10 
nection with the maintenance, operation and development 
of the roads should, during the period of the war, be wisely 
related to the financial operations of the Government. 
Our first duty is, of course, to conserve the common inter- 
est and the common safety and to make certain that 15 
nothing stands in the way of the successful prosecution of 
the great war for liberty and justice, but it is also an obliga- 
tion of public conscience and of public honor that the 
private interests we disturb should be kept safe from un- 
just injury, and it is of the utmost consequence to the 20 
Government itself that all great financial operations should 
be stabilized and coordinated with the financial operations 
of the Government. No borrowing should run athwart the 
borrowings of the federal treasury, and no fundamental 
industrial values should anywhere be unnecessarily im- 25 
paired. In the hands of many thousands of small in- 
vestors in the country, as well as in national banks, in 
insurance companies, in savings banks, in trust com- 
panies, in financial agencies of every kind, railway se- 
curities, the sum total of which runs up to some ten or 30 
eleven thousand millions, constitute a vital part of the 
structure of credit, and the unquestioned solidity of that 
structure must be maintained. 

The Secretary of War and I easily agreed that, in view 



296 Wood row Wilson 

of the many complex interests which must be safeguarded 
and harmonized, as well as because of his exceptional 
experience and ability in this new field of governmental 
action, the Honorable William G. McAdoo was the right 
5 man to assume direct administrative control of this new 
executive task. At our request, he consented to assume 
the authority and duties of organizer and Director General 
of the new Railway Administration. He has assumed those 
duties and his work is in active progress. 

10 It is probably too much to expect that even under the 
unified railway administration which will now be possible 
sufficient economies can be effected in the operation of the 
railways to make it possible to add to their equipment and 
extend their operative facilities as much as the present 

15 extraordinary demands upon their use will render desirable 
without resorting to the national treasury for the funds. 
If it is not possible, it will, of course, be necessary to resort 
to the Congress for grants of money for that purpose. The 
Secretary of the Treasury will advise with your committees 

20 with regard to this very practical aspect of the matter. 
For the present, I suggest only the guarantees I have in- 
dicated and such appropriations as are necessary at the 
outset of this task. I take the liberty of expressing the 
hope that the Congress may grant these promptly and 

25 ungrudgingly. We are dealing with great matters and 
will, I am sure, deal with them greatly. 



THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE 

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, 
January 8, 1918.] 

Gentlemen of the Congress: 

Once more, as repeatedly before, the spokesmen of the 
Central Empires have indicated their desire to discuss the 
objects of the war and the possible bases of a general peace. 
Parleys have been in progress at Brest-Litovsk between 5 
Russian representatives and representatives of the Central 
Powers to which the attention of all the belligerents has 
been invited for the purpose of ascertaining whether it 
may be possible to extend these parleys into a general 
conference with regard to terms of peace and settlement. 10 
The Russian representatives presented not only a per- 
fectly definite statement of the principles upon which they 
would be willing to conclude peace but also an equally 
definite program of the concrete application of those 
principles. The representatives of the Central Powers, on 15 
their part, presented an outline of settlement which, if 
much less definite, seemed susceptible of liberal interpre- 
tation until their specific program of practical terms was 
added. That program proposed no concessions at all 
either to the sovereignty of Russia or to the preferences of 20 
the populations with whose fortunes it dealt, but meant, 
in a word, that the Central Empires were to keep every 
foot of territory their armed forces had occupied, — every 
province, every city, every point of vantage, — as a per- 
manent addition to their territories and their power. 25 
It is a reasonable conjecture that the general principles 

297 



298 Woodrow Wilson 

of settlement which they at first suggested originated with 
the more Hberal statesmen of Germany and Austria, the 
men who have begun to feel the force of their own peo- 
ples' thought and purpose, while the concrete terms of 
5 actual settlement came from the military leaders who 
have no thought but to keep what they have got. The 
negotiations have been broken off. The Russian repre- 
sentatives were sincere and in earnest. They cannot 
entertain such proposals of conquest and domination. 

10 The whole incident is full of significance. It is also full 
of perplexity. With whom are the Russian representatives 
dealing? For whom are the representatives of the Central 
Empires speaking? Are they speaking for the majorities 
of their respective parliaments or for the minority parties, 

15 that military and imperialistic minority which has so far 
dominated their whole policy and controlled the affairs of 
Turkey and of the Balkan states which have felt obhged to 
become their associates in this war? The Russian repre- 
sentatives have insisted, very justly, very wisely, and in the 

20 true spirit of modern democracy, that the conferences they 
have been holding with the Teutonic and Turkish states- 
men should be held within open, not closed, doors, and all 
the world has been audience, as was desired. To whom 
have we been listening, then? To those who speak the 

25 spirit and intention of the Resolutions of the German 
Reichstag of the ninth of July last, the spirit and intention 
of the liberal leaders and parties of Germany, or to those 
who resist and defy that spirit and intention and insist 
upon conquest and subjugation? Or are we listening, in 

30 fact, to both, unreconciled and in open and hopeless con- 
tradiction? These are very serious and pregnant ques- 
tions. Upon the answer to them depends the peace of the 
world. 

But, whatever the results of the parleys at Brest- 



The Conditions of Peace 299 

Litovsk, whatever the confusions of counsel and of pur- 
pose in the utterances of the spokesmen of the Central 
Empires, they have again attempted to acquaint the 
world with their objects in the war and have again chal- 
lenged their adversaries to say what their objects are and 5 
what sort of settlement they would deem just and satis- 
factory. There is no good reason why that challenge 
should not be responded to, and responded to with the 
utmost candor. We did not wait for it. Not once, but 
again and again, we have laid our whole thought and 10 
purpose before the world, not in general terms only, but 
each time with sufficient definition to make it clear what 
sort of definitive terms of settlement must necessarily 
spring out of them. Within the last week Mr. Lloyd 
George has spoken with admirable candor and in admirable js 
spirit for the people and Government of Great Britain. 
There is no confusion of counsel among the adversaries 
of the Central Powers, no uncertainty of principle, no 
vagueness of detail. • The only secrecy of counsel, the 
only lack of fearless frankness, the only failure to make 20 
definite statement of the objects of the war, lies with 
Germany and her Allies. The issues of life and death 
hang upon these definitions. No statesman who has the 
least conception of his responsibility ought for a moment 
to permit himself to continue this tragical and appalling 25 
outpouring of blood and treasure unless he is sure beyond 
a peradventure that the objects of the vital sacrifice are 
part and parcel of the very life of society and that the 
people for whom he speaks think them right and impera- 
tive as he does. 30 

There is, moreover, a voice calling for these definitions 
of principle and of purpose which is, it seems to me, more 
thrilling and more compelling than any of the many 
moving voices with which the troubled air of the world is 



300 Wood row Wilson 

filled. It is the voice of the Russian people. They are 
prostrate and all but helpless, it would seem, before the 
grim power of Germany, which has hitherto known no 
relenting and no pity. Their power, apparently, is shat- 
5 tered. And yet their soul is not subservient. They will 
not yield either in principle or in action. Their concep- 
tion of what is right, of what it is humane and honorable 
for them to accept, has been stated with a frankness, a 
largeness of view, a generosity of spirit, and a universal 

lo human sympathy which must challenge the admiration 
of every friend of mankind; and they have refused to com- 
pound their ideals or desert others that they themselves 
may be safe. They call to us to say what it is that we 
desire, in what, if in anything, our purpose and our spirit 

15 differ from theirs; and I believe that the people of the 
United States would wish me to respond, with utter sim- 
plicity and frankness. Whether their present leaders be- 
lieve it or not, it is our heartfelt desire and hope that some 
way may be opened whereby we may be privileged to 

20 assist the people of Russia to attain their utmost hope of 
liberty and ordered peace. 

It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of 
peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely open and 
that they shall involve and permit henceforth no secret 

25 understandings of any kind. The day of conquest and 
aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secret 
covenants entered into in the interest of particular govern- 
ments and likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset 
the peace of the world. It is this happy fact, now clear 

30 to the view of every public man whose thoughts do not 
still linger in an age that is dead and gone, which makes it 
possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent 
with justice and the peace of the world to avow now or at 
any other time the objects it has in view. 



The Conditions of Peace 301 

We entered this war because violations of right had 
occurred which touched us to the quick and made the 
life of our own people impossible unless they were cor- 
rected and the world secured once for all against their 
recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is 5 
nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be 
made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be 
made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our 
own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institu- 
tions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other 10 
peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. 
All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this 
interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that 
unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. 
The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our pro- 15 
gram; and that program, the only possible program, 
as we see it, is this: 

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after 
which there shall be no private international understand- 
ings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always 20 
frankly and in the public view. 

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, out- 
side territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except 
as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by interna- 
tional action for the enforcement of international cove- 25 

nants. 

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic 
barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade 
conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace 
and associating themselves for its maintenance. ^ 30 

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national 
armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent 
with domestic safety. 

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial ad- 



302 Woodrow Wilson 

justment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict ob- 
servance of the principle that in determining all such 
questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations 
concerned must have equal weight with the equitable 

5 claims of the government whose title is to be determined. 

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a 

settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure 

the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of 

the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unem- 

lo barrassed opportunity for the independent determina- 
tion of her own political development and national policy 
and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of 
free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, 
more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that 

15 she may need and may herself desire. The treatment 
accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to 
come will be the acid test of their good will, of their com.- 
prehension of her needs as distinguished from their own 
interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy. 

20 VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be 
evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the 
sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other 
free nations. No other single act will serve as this will 
serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws 

25 which they have themselves set and determined for the 
government of their relations with one another. Without 
this healing act the whole structure and validity of inter- 
national law is forever impaired. 

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the in- 

30 vaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France 
by Prussia in 187 1 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which 
has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, 
should be righted, in order that peace may once more be 
made secure in the interest of all. 



The Conditions of Peace 303 

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be 
effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality. 

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place 
among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and as- 
sured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of au- 5 
tonomous development. 

XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be 
evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded 
free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the 
several Balkan states to one another determined by 10 
friendly counsel along historically established lines of 
allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees 

of the political and economic independence and territorial 
integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered 
into. 15 

XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman 
Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the 
other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule 
should be assured an undoubted security of life and an 
absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous de- 20 
velopment, and the Dardanelles should be permanently 
opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all 
nations under international guarantees. 

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected 
which should include the territories inhabited by indis- 25 
putably Polish populations, which should be assured a 
free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and 
economic independence and territorial integrity should 
be guaranteed by international covenant. 

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed 30 
under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mu- 
tual guarantees of political independence and territorial 
integrity to great and small states alike. 

In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and 



304 Woodrow Wilson 

assertions of right we feel ourselves to be intimate partners 
of all the governments and peoples associated together 
against the Imperialists. We cannot be separated in in- 
terest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the 

5 end. 

For such arrangements and covenants we are willing 
to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved; 
but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire 
a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by 

10 removing the chief provocations to war, which this pro- 
gram does remove. We have no jealousy of German 
greatness, and there is nothing in this program that 
impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction 
of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made 

15 her record very bright and very enviable. We do not 
wish to injure her or to block in any way her legitimate 
influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either 
with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade if she is 
willing to associate herself with us and the other peace- 

20 loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and 
law and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a place 
of equality among the peoples of the world, — the new 
world in which we now live, — instead of a place of mas- 
tery. 

25 Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration 
or modification of her institutions. But it is necessary, 
we must frankly say, and necessary as a preliminary to 
any intelligent dealings with her on our part, that we 
should know whom her spokesmen speak for when they 

30 speak to us, whether for the Reichstag majority or for 
the military party and the men whose creed is imperial 
domination. 

We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to 
admit of any further doubt or question. An evident prin- 



The Conditions of Peace 305 

ciple runs through the whole program I have outHned. 
It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, 
and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety 
with one another, whether they be strong or weak. Un- 
less this principle be made its foundation no part of the 5 
structure of international justice can stand. The people 
of the United States could act upon no other principle; 
and to the vindication of this principle they are ready to 
devote their lives, their honor, and everything that they 
possess. The moral climax of this the culminating and 10 
final war for human liberty has come, and they are ready 
to put their own strength, their own highest purpose, 
their own integrity and devotion to the test. 



I 



FORCE TO THE UTMOST 

[Speech at the Opening of the Third Liberty Loan Campaign, de- 
livered in the Fifth Regiment Armory, Baltimore, April 6, igi8.] 

Fellow-Citizens : 

This is the anniversary of our acceptance of Germany's 
challenge to fight for our right to Hve and be free, and for 
the sacred rights of freemen every^vhere. The nation is 

5 awake. There is no need to call to it. We know what the 
war must cost, our utmost sacrifice, the lives of our fittest 
men, and, if need be, all that we possess. 

The loan we are met to discuss is one of the least parts 
of what we are called upon to give and to do, though in 

lo itself imperative. The people of the whole country are 
alive to the necessity of it, and are ready to lend to the 
utmost, even where it involves a sharp skimping and daily 
sacrifice to lend out of meagre earnings. They will look 
with reprobation and contempt upon those who can and 

15 will not, upon those who demand a higher rate of interest, 
upon those who think of it as a mere commercial trans- 
action. I have not come, therefore, to urge the loan, I 
have come only to give you, if I can, a more vivid concep- 
tion of what it is for. 

20 The reasons for this great war, the reason why it had to 
come, the need to fight it through, and the issues that hang 
upon its outcome, are more clearly disclosed now than ever 
before. It is easy to see just what this particular loan 
means, because the cause we are fighting for stands more 

25 sharply revealed than at any previous crisis of the momen- 
tous struggle. The man who knows least can now see 

306 



Force to the Utmost 307 

plainly how the cause of justice stands, and what is the 
imperishable thing he is asked to invest in. Men in 
America may be more sure than they ever were before that 
the cause is their own, and that, if it should be lost, their 
own great nation's place and mission in the world would 5 
be lost with it. 

I call you to witness, my fellow-countrymen, that at no 
stage of this terrible business have I judged the purposes of 
Germany intemperately. I should be ashamed in the 
presence of affairs so grave, so fraught with the destinies to 
of mankind throughout all the world, to speak with tru- 
culence, to use the weak language of hatred or vindictive 
purpose. We must judge as we would be judged. I have 
sought to learn the objects Germany has in this war from 
the mouths of her own spokesmen, and to deal as frankly 15 
with them as I wished them to deal with me. I have laid 
bare our own ideals, our own purposes, without reserve or 
doubtful phrase, and have asked them to say as plainly 
what it is that they seek. 

We have ourselves proposed no injustice, no aggression. 20 
We are ready, whenever the final reckoning is made, to be 
just to the German people, deal fairly with the German 
power, as with all others. There can be no difference be- 
tween peoples in the final judgment, if it is indeed to be a 
righteous judgment. To propose anything but justice, 25 
even-handed and dispassionate justice, to Germany at 
any time, whatever the outcome of the war, would be to 
renounce and dishonor our own cause, for we ask nothing 
that we are not willing to accord. 

It has been with this thought that I have sought to 30 
learn from those who spoke for Germany whether it was 
justice or dominion and the execution of their own will 
upon the other nations of the world that the German 
leaders were seeking. They have answered— answered in 



3o8 Woodrow Wilson 

unmistakable terms. They have avowed that it was not 
justice, but dominion and the unhindered execution of 
their own will. The avowal has not come from Germany's 
statesmen. It has come from her military leaders, who 

5 are her real rulers. Her statesmen have said that they 
wished peace, and were ready to discuss its terms whenever 
their opponents were willing to sit down at the conference 
table with them. Her present Chancellor has said — in 
indefinite and uncertain terms, indeed, and in phrases that 

lo often seem to deny their own meaning, but with as much 

plainness as he thought prudent — that he believed that 

peace should be based upon the principles which we had 

declared would be our own in the final settlement. 

At Brest-Litovsk her civilian delegates spoke in similar 

15 terms; professed their desire to conclude a fair peace and 
accord to the peoples with whose fortunes they were 
dealing the right to choose their own allegiances. But 
action accompanied and followed the profession. Their 
military masters, the men who act for Germany and 

20 exhibit her purpose in execution, proclaimed a very differ- 
ent conclusion. We can not mistake what they have 
done — in Russia, in Finland, in the Ukraine, in Rumania. 
The real test of their justice and fair play has come. 
From this we may judge the rest. 

25 They are enjoying in Russia a cheap triumph in which 
no brave or gallant nation can long take pride. A great 
people,, helpless by their own act, Hes for the time at their 
mercy. Their fair professions are forgotten. They no- 
where set up justice, but ever}avhere impose their power 

30 and exploit everything for their own use and aggrandize- 
ment, and the peoples of conquered provinces are invited 
to be free under their dominion ! 

Are we not justified in believing that they would do the 
same things at their western front if they were not there 



Force to the Utmost 309 

face to face with armies whom even their countless divi- 
sions cannot overcome? If, when they have felt their 
check to be final, they should propose favorable and 
equitable terms with regard to Belgium and France and 
Italy, could they blame us if we concluded that they did 5 
so only to assure themselves of a free hand in Russia and 
the East? 

Their purpose is, undoubtedly, to make all the Slavic 
peoples, all the free and ambitious nations of the Baltic ^ 
Peninsula, all the lands that Turkey has dominated and 10 
misruled, subject to their will and ambition, and build 
upon that dominion an empire of force upon which they 
fancy that they can then erect an empire of gain and 
commercial supremacy — an empire as hostile to the 
Americas as to the Europe which it will overawe — an 15 
empire which will ultimately master Persia, India, and 
the peoples of the Far East. 

In such a program our ideals, the ideals of justice and 
humanity and liberty, the principle of the free self- 
determination of nations, upon which all the modern 20 
world insists, can play no part. They are rejected for the 
ideals of power, for the principle that the strong must rule 
the weak, that trade must follow the flag, whether those 
to whom it is taken welcome it or not, that the peoples 
of the world are to be made subject to the patronage 25 
and overlordship of those who have the power to en- 
force it. 

That program once carried out, America and all who 
care or dare to stand with her must arm and prepare them- 
selves to contest the mastery of the world — a mastery 30 
in which the rights of common men, the rights of women 
and of all who are weak, must for the time being be 
trodden underfoot and disregarded and the old, age-long 
struggle for freedom and right begin again at its beginning. 



3IO Woodrow Wilson 

Everything that America has Hved for and loved and 
grown great to vindicate and bring to a glorious realization 
will have fallen in utter ruin and the gates of mercy once 
more pitilessly shut upon mankind ! 
5 The thing is preposterous and impossible; and yet is 
not that what the whole course and action of the German 
armies has meant wherever they have moved? I do not 
wish, even in this moment of utter disillusionment, to 
judge harshly or unrighteously. I judge only what the 

lo German arms have accompHshed with unpitying thorough- 
ness throughout every fair region they have touched. 

What, then are we to do? For myself, I am ready, ready 
still, ready even now, to discuss a fair and just and honest 
peace at any time that it is sincerely purposed — a peace in 

15 which the strong and the weak shall fare alike. But the 
answer, when I proposed such a peace, came from the 
German commanders in Russia and I cannot mistake the 
meaning of the answer. 

I accept the challenge. I know that you accept it. All 

20 the world shall know that you accept it. It shall appear 
in the utter sacrifice and self-forgetfulness with which we 
shall give all that w^e love and all that we have to redeem 
the world and make it fit for free men like ourselves to live 
in. This now is the meaning of all that we do. Let ever>"- 

25 thing that we say, my fellow-countrymen, everything that 
we henceforth plan and accomplish, ring true to this re- 
sponse till the majesty and might of our concerted 
power shall fill the thought and utterly defeat the force of 
those who flout and misprize what we honor and hold 

30 dear. 

Germany has once more said that force, and force alone, 
shall decide whether justice and peace shall reign in the 
affairs of men, whether right as America conceives it or 

\ dominion as she conceives it shall determine the destinies 



Force to the Utmost in 

of mankind. There is, therefore, but one response possible 
from us: Force, force to the utmost, force without stint or 
limit, the righteous and triumphant force which shall 
make right the law of the world and cast every selfish 
dominion down in the dust. 






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